I was growing up listening to Queen. Freddie Mercury threw those incredible melodies into his songs.

Toxins love to get you while you're young. Lead mercury secondhand smoke and sundry other environmental nasties do a lot more damage when tissue is immature vulnerable and growing than when it's mature and comparatively fixed.

In 1950 when the Giants signed me they gave me $15 000. I bought a 1950 Mercury. I couldn't drive but I had it in the parking lot there and everybody that could drive would drive the car. So it was like a community thing.

Well Freddie Mercury is a really huge rock star in my head. I've always thought he was just so tough and such an amazing entertainer really a contradiction in many ways as well. So he was incredible.

There are so many different people that I've emulated vocally. In the rock world - Sebastian Bach Vince Neil Freddie Mercury Robert Plant. They all had amazing vocal talent.