I watched the night unfold from beginning to end on my own here in my flat in Budapest where I've been working for the last six months, and when it was announced that Barack Obama was indeed president-elect, I wept.
I think you need humour and a sense of fun, which is what I try to bring to my books to leaven the danger and action. The ones that really transcend the genre always have a great laugh in them, such as 'Fright Night,' 'Lost Boys,' 'American Werewolf in London' - just to name a few.
Once we started headlining at the Fillmore East, we were free to play all night, at least for the second set. 'Whipping Post' could get lengthy.
People think we don't give a toss about the game, but when I walked out of Windsor Park that night I felt lower than a snake's belly. The reality is still there.
During the day, I don't read too much of the blog traffic, but then at night, I read transcripts of all of the network packages, and then I watch the wires and some of the political blogs.
Black Lives Matter started from a post that I put on Facebook after the acquittal of George Zimmerman. I woke up in the middle of the night sobbing, just trying to process what had happened and wanting to find community around being in a lot of grief and having a lot of rage.
It means a lot in my business and its a wonderful feeling to be recognized for what you have done over a lifetime, but I didn't go crazy. I still eat my cereal in the morning, have a sandwich in the afternoon, go to bed at night. You know, nothing really different.
I lose sleep at night wondering whether we are intelligent enough to figure out the universe. I don't know.
After Nashville sushi and a long debate on Bob Dylan, we went into Woodland Studios at 10 pm that night for a look around, and jammed for 5 hours solid.
Now I'm seen by more people in one episode than I was in 20 years of theatre and movies. It's gratifying to have an impact on 25 million people a night, but I can say goodbye to my lunch-pail life as a working actor. I'm scared I might be a celebrity.
As a writer, that moment every few years when I buy a new laptop and find out that all the word processing stuff has slightly changed again (stuff I spend every working day using) is like getting into bed at night and finding some mad robot where you expected your wife to be.
Because when I have been busy at the United Nations during crises, it has meant working day and night.
We're all concerned about the budget. We're all concerned about what's happening financially in our country. There's no question about it. Congress is working day and night. In fact, every time I go home the lights are on at the top of the Capitol.
I was only listening to rock music, burning joss sticks in my bedroom, wanting only to be a disc jockey, and watching six hours of television a night - the worst kind of teenage alienation.
I remember many a time, going into someplace like Wrigley Field - where you could cut the humidity with a knife - and playing a doubleheader. I loved to play the game. It didn't matter if it was a doubleheader, or a single game, or a day game after a night game. I wanted to play.
Nobody's ever asked me to pay for a meal before I've eaten it, I've never been pulled over just because I was driving the wrong kind of car in the wrong kind of area at the wrong time of night.
You can't just sort of come with, say, 'Yesterday,' or 'A Hard Day's Night,' and it be in the wrong place in the wrong show, and expect the song to work theatrically.
When I was writing my first book, 'In Harm's Way,' I witnessed the sense of sacrifice that those WWII veterans possessed. I was surprised that sometimes their grandchildren hadn't talked to them about the historic events of that night in July 1945, when the USS Indianapolis went down.
You can't do seven successful albums and just hate each other. Our yin and yang, and night and day, is what made us great when we went into the studio.
My first venture was to trade bicycle parts and hosiery yarn. The initial days proved to be difficult, and I earned very little from my business. But I kept at it. Each day, when I retired for the night, I told myself that money would come in the next day.
