Not to dismiss Gershwin, but Gershwin is the chip; Ellington was the block.
I was anti-intellectual to the nth. Basically I liked to dance and paint, and that was about it.
I have lost my credibility as a hit maker because of these side excursions into other branches of music by not being consistent. Consistency seems to be all important.
I don’t know how to sell out. If I tried to sell out I don’t think I could.
When I felt that fame, people were nosing me out, well I moved on. I used traveling names. Wigs, if necessary.
I liked playing in small clubs. I really liked holding the attention of thirty or forty people. I never liked the roar of the big crowd.
Some people are upset to see you doing ordinary things. Those people, if they were a celebrity, they would have an entourage.
I like my freedom. I like to do my own grocery shopping. People do recognize you. They are kind of shocked. Some people like it. It makes them feel at ease. It confirms their hopes that you are in fact similar to them.
People were very protective of me. Overly so. I was in the industry for a long time before I had any idea of what drugs people were doing.
I like my freedom. I like to do my own grocery shopping.
I like to move around. I travel. I’ve driven across country by myself.
I didn’t think I had much of a following in the south. I thought I was anonymous down there so I kept to the south. I found in certain pockets that I was quite recognizable, and I just hit a wig store.
I never really wanted to be a star. I didn’t like entering a room with all eyes on me. I still don’t really like the attention of a birthday party.
I prefer Christmas, which is everybody’s holiday. It’s just my nature. I don’t like to be zeroed in on en masse.
You can give me 400,000 hostile people and I won’t even break sweat. If you give me 200 adoring people, my mouth will dry out.
I try not to steal from myself, but the modalities create similarities.
Musically, I don’t think I’d ever dry up. I trust my musical invention.
I got in before SoHo was SoHo. It was just Little Italy when I was in there. It’s still off the touristy track. It’s just away from the Saturday action, the crowds and everything. It’s too expensive. It’s insane. You’ve got to be a billionaire to live on Manhattan now.
Fibers in a variety of colors protrude out of my skin like mushrooms after a rainstorm. They cannot be forensically identified as animal, vegetable, or mineral.
Rolling Stone hates me. They must have an editorial policy to do me in for many years.
Lazy reviewers look up other people’s reviews and they write the same thing, so you get people writing crap based on crap.