The music we're playing now is based on my heritage, which is Russian, Romanian and Hungarian.

For me Brazilian music is the perfect mix of melody and rhythm. It just bubbles rhythmically. If I had to pick just one music style to play if would be Brazilian.

Why do you have to retire at 65? Why can't you start at 70? You know, like wine. Why can't music be that way? My new band, we're playing stuff that's never been done before.

You have to be concerned with yourself because if you're not on it all the time, nobody else is going to be.

I always say, if you keep your head in the sand, you don't know where the kick's coming from.

I recently formed a foundation to raise awareness for prostate cancer. I feel it's very necessary that men be more aware about prostate cancer and their health in general.

Music allows the great opportunity to play with people who turned you on and you love.

One of the advantages of not having a record contract is that you can make your own mistakes, you don't need somebody else to organize them for you.

To most jazz critics I was basically Kenny G.

When you get cancer, it's like really time to look at what your life was and is, and I decided that everything I've done so far is not as important as what I'm going to do now.

My ego is controlled enough that I don't have to be the focus.

Think about it: Look at the strides of awareness and treatment and tests that women have had with breast cancer, that the gay community has had with AIDS, because they're active and they talk about it.

By the time I'm 90, I hope to have it together.

I was raised in Brooklyn, and I lived there for 59 years.

But when I first got cancer, after the initial shock and the fear and paranoia and crying and all that goes with cancer - that word means to most people ultimate death - I decided to see what I could do to take that negative and use it in a positive way.

The reality is that what you find out is that your head is the medicine. If your head is not in the right place and you don't think positively, all the medicine technology in the world is not going to work.

Being selfish to me means that you have to look out for yourself and you don't have to sacrifice.

What I try to do is produce an atmosphere where musicians want to invest in what they do and give to the recording. I hire those musicians who I know will play something creative and interesting.

I loved the Brazilian music I played. But this is finally me. For the first time I think it's really me.

Being stubborn has helped, being selfish is not a bad thing.

The music we're playing now is based on my heritage, which is Russian, Romanian and Hungarian.

I had sat in one day in Central Park with Bonnie and Delaney, and Duane was playing with them, so I asked if he wanted to work on an album. You never had to say to him how to play the guitar.

My father's father came from Russia; my mother came from Romania.

You don't have to live the blues to play the blues.

My youngest son, who is now the drummer in my band, lives in Brooklyn. My oldest son is about to move out to California, and my daughters are both out of town.

If you want to play somebody's music, you'd better go into his house.

You dont have to live the blues to play the blues.

When you use music to worship you are not attempting to entertain.

Pop music, disco music, and heavy metal music is about shutting out the tensions of life, putting it away.

When I did the record, I was coming off a time when my contract had been sold and the music industry had changed a lot. I didn't understand how to make records for big labels. I was waiting for a new kind of record label to emerge.

You've got to realize. In the western world, regardless of what color you are, what title the music is, it's all played by the same notes.

Don't make music for some vast, unseen audience or market or ratings share or even for something as tangible as money. Though it's crucial to make a living, that shouldn't be your inspiration. Do it for yourself.

Whether I'm doing music or I'm walking down the street or I'm in a record store buying a record or I walk into a comic store and I'm buying comics or having a drink with my friends, it's the same me.

When rock came along the lyrics and melodies became less important and it bothered me to think that perhaps they might not regain the value they have to music - they are music.

I want to promote poetry to the point where you got all the baldhead kids running around doing poetry, getting the music out of the way and having only words, the spoken word, and then see what happens.

There is no music that can't be used politically, but the motives behind the creation of that music can be non-political.

The kind of music or the kind of arrangements that I do, the kind of musicians I choose, is just what I like to hear.

If not for music, I would probably be a very frustrated scientist. It's one way to answer the question, 'What is the meaning of life?' I feel music answers it better.

Since I'm allergic to various things, the army wouldn't accept me during the war, and I got into the Office of War Information, which sent music to Europe.

My singing is my hobby. It's me and my brother. We just enjoy writing music.

I was determined to carve out a music of my own. I didn't want to copy anybody.

I have tried to make the music a bit easier for them to understand.

What makes my approach special is that I do different things. I do jazz, blues, country music and so forth. I do them all, like a good utility man.

That music and the lyrical aspects of Razorblade Romance is so personal to me that, now with me being grown up a bit and meeting new people and doing new things, it makes me look at the same things I was writing about back in the day through a different colored lens.

The only time I would like to see was the 20s and 30s in America because I love the music and the style and the optimism, I wanted to see New York being built. I wanted to see all that, you know.

My big love was the Beatles. I was more into music.

When we started making electronic music I imagined that the reaction we got from the rock musicians must have been similar to the one the beat groups got from people like my dad.

Uhm, I'm the one wanting the lessons! I don't want to say too much about it because I'd rather have you see the movie, but he's trying to find his music.

The value of music is to be able to play one note at the right time in the right way.