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The Grateful Dead were an influence on our music but they weren't by a long shot the biggest influence.

The problem with music was always that the sound system often obliterated the words, and words, not music, have always been what I was about.

With 'Elect the Dead,' I learned how to make a rock record without a rock band and make the rock record I've always wanted to make.

Whenever there was a choice between music and anything else, music won hands down every time.

The music we made then was so amateurish, compared to the rest of mainstream pop or rock and roll. But what differentiated us from what everybody else was doing in the business was the fact that you could tell that these people came from different reference areas.

I always believed in the music we did and that's why it was uncompromising.

I come from an era of music when it had heart and soul.

In 1974, when I started working with the material that became 'Horses,' a lot of our great voices had died. We'd lost Jimi Hendrix and Jim Morrison and Janis Joplin, and people like Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King and Malcolm X.

It was a great time to be making music because everything else was changing.