When you're little, you're open to things. It's not like you get into this rehearsed zone when you're a child. At first you play different sides of yourself. And I think it will be really exciting one day to have a character to go into that's not anything like me whatsoever.
It doesn't make sense for me to try to be, like, a dance dude who only releases two 12-inches a year and then plays every weekend. Making an album, you get to put out a body of work that shows a lot of different sides of you. And you get to work on it for an intense period of time and promote that album. And then you get to move on.
As a person, I have a lot of different sides to me, and I genuinely just embrace them. I don't think, 'Oh, I gotta put on my cool face now!'
The acting part of me is not me. The music side is who I really am and what I want to talk about. It'll be hard for people to differentiate those different sides but I think it's possible. Once the music is out there, people will start to realize how serious I am about it rather than, 'Oh god, another actress making an album.'
Metal, I love metal sounds. If I have a stick with me, I just drag it across a fence. And all fences make different sounds, just like people when they laugh.
I grew up in my neighborhood with salsa, of course bachata, but also hip-hop, Nirvana - it was just like a mixed culture. It was a beautiful thing for me because at the moment I started creating music, having all these different sounds and elements, it was very organic because I grew up with all these types different music.
I grew up with so many different sounds, and 'Lost' allows me to express all of it, the melodic and the atonal.
I'm so happy people are seeing the eclectic side of me. I'm really honored to be able to push my voice into different sounds. Otherwise it all gets a bit samey same.
I would love for people to look at me as a great singer but also know exactly who I am, the way that we have loved and respected people like Gladys Knight and Patti LaBelle, having gone through the different stages of their lives with them. That's the type of history I want to have.
I have a lot of different stages in my life when training has been easy or hard. Now, it seems that I have been training for so long that it has become almost second nature to me.
In this business, you have a hierarchy of stars. Russell Crowe, Tom Hanks - you name 'em, they can play any part they want. Guys like me who are somewhere down in the middle of the pack, that's a different story. I can do things in the theater that I can't do anyplace else.
It only takes me about four days to write an album. It don't take that long. I just gotta have the feeling. If I don't have the feeling, it's a different story. I gotta be in the mood.
Queen has always been my favorite band. Freddie is the greatest singer, ever, is the way I look at it. The other thing about Queen for me is they embraced so many different styles.
There were a lot of different styles in the house - Motown, Led Zeppelin, Rolling Stones, jazz - and my dad played flamenco guitar. Soon I realized that bass was what was really grooving me.
People have different takes on clothes and what to wear and colors and all that stuff, so why make a big deal about uniformity? It took me a long time to grasp that particular concept, simply because I was coming from the James Brown thing. Again, I wouldn't trade that experience for anything.
South Africa gives me a perspective of what's real and what's not real. So I go back to South Africa to both lose myself and gain awareness of myself. Every time I go back, it doesn't take long for me to get caught into a very different thing. A very different sense of myself.
I'm an old, white-haired guy. If I'm not recognized, I'm treated pretty much like every other elderly. But if people recognize me, it's a whole different thing.
Starship was a whole different thing. It was pop rock. It made more money and had more hit songs than Airplane. There was no cultural or social ethic behind it. For me, it was like selling out. I was the only one selling out. The rest enjoyed doing what they were doing.
The doctor didn't want me to play golf anymore and was worried about me fly-fishing. Golf is something I enjoy, but fly-fishing is a different thing: That's religion. Hunting is religion for me. I didn't want to give those up.
I wanted to try a different way of making music. That's what made me try different things with my voice.
