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Sinatra was pretty astute - he used the best songwriters around, he used all the resources, he covered every song from the era basically.

I kept looking to do songs that were written years ago and would live or outlive all of us, and the one thing they had in common was Sinatra.

I learned a lot about what I do with my craft, how I present my music. A lot of things about him were very much an influence on me and everybody else. Once you get in that fold and you're around it, you get to experience something that I don't think we'll ever see again. There will never be anybody like Frank Sinatra. Ever.

When I was very, very young, I decided that I was gonna catalogue my times because that's what other people who I admired did. That's what Bob Dylan did, that's what Frank Sinatra did, Hank Williams did, in very different ways.

Frank Sinatra taught me how to do him. It took me seven years to master him. He would tell me, tap your foot, Rich, and don't forget to grasp your sleeve.

Sinatra had a lot of mood swings, but he was wonderful to my wife Barbara and to me. He made no bones about who he liked and who he loved, and he had this great charisma. When he walked into a room, it stopped. I've only seen that happen with Ronald Reagan.

I've certainly learned a great deal from my husband, though, and could never have written a book like Liquor without him and the people he introduces me to and the stories he brings home.

My style is colloquial storytelling. It's the way we tell stories to one another - it's not writerly, it's not overdone.

I always wrote little things when I was younger. My first opus was a book of poems put down in a spiral notebook at five or six, handsomely accompanied by crayon illustrations.