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Mostly I've never let record companies become involved with my music, which was a very smart thing that my first manager Dave Robinson did, to keep them out of it.

It was a lot easier to write songs before I had a record deal, because the record labels and the industry doesn't mean to put pressure on you, but they do. They don't realize that they are, but you end up having a pressure there that you feel. At times I feel myself wanting to say, 'Just let me do what I do.'

And you have a record company behind it, this is a key too, you need people to fight for your records, at least a little bit. So if you have a great song, it's catchy, and you've got a little bit of help, I think that's all you need. But there hasn't been that in music.

But what you realise after you've been in the business for a while is that people develop opinions about you that don't have anything to do with your music, they like or dislike you for a million reasons, they like or dislike you for your last record.

I certainly have gotten caught up in the music business at various times in my life, mostly because you want to get along with whatever record company you're dealing with. I don't want to be flaky. I don't want to be some temperamental, hard-to-work-with musician.

Actually, I have another record I made with them in 1976, but I've had such a bad experience with record companies, because I keep my head so much in music and not in business.

I've made sure that in any situation and with any record label, I'm allowed to write my own music.

Once I got a record contract, and I took my songs which weren't quite finished, or maybe they were a good idea, maybe they weren't. I took them into the studio and developed them. They came to life and they evolved... and they're great.

Sometimes you have trouble because someone 'likes' your music so much. They follow you around for hours singing little bits of the songs, or just freaking out.

I started recording because I was always complaining about the records that I was getting of my songs. At least if I did them and messed them up, I wouldn't have anyone else to blame.