Quote

Fame isolates people from reality. That happens to many artists, and I don't want it to happen to me.

I think of myself as a performance artist. I hate being called a pop star. I hate that.

And that's the kind of thing people think, you know, that if you sign up to be a singer-songwriter you know how to deal with people setting up hate websites, or people being obsessed with you and crying when you touch them, but you don't, and you just have to deal with.

There's a difference between a pop star and an artist. Pop stars have to be perfect all the time; an artist is allowed, on occasion, to suck. And I put myself in that category because I sometimes suck. I'm not trying to please the masses. It's not going to happen, so I don't try.

In other words, the celebrity gets out of hand, and if you're not careful, you will forget what you are about - and that is you are about making music that people want to hear.

I have a lot of musician friends. I worked in radio as a music director, and I know everybody hears about the George Straits and the Garth Brooks and the Kenny Chesneys and all that, but for every major star, there are thousands who didn't quite make it.

People expect not just songwriters but all personalities to pontificate about their egos - they just wanna see someone talking about themselves constantly. I'm not interested in that.

It's hard to get people at a record company to talk about music. They don't seem to want to talk about music, it's all marketing, and that's part of a record, you gotta get it out there, people have gotta hear it, but you could do it in a way that's not repulsive.

When I was a kid, I'd read about celebrities who didn't want to talk to their fans after a show. I told myself, 'That's terrible, and I would never do that.'

I've been with certain stars; some are caring and pay attention to their fans and to their fellow performers and some are too busy. Elvis never seemed too busy.