I found out a lot of stuff through MTV, and I didn't even have cable, I just saw it at friends' houses. But my culture in junior high was totally influenced by it.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
I've noticed more people coming to shows and I've had a feeling that they were from a part of the culture I haven't been able to get to before, younger people. I think on iTunes they've been experimenting with my songs and the digital radio world has been very kind to me.
I've only been on MTV once as one of their 'Closet Classics,' with some bootleg footage of a 1970 tour I did in Holland. They didn't know what to make of my music, but they finally invented a name for it - world beat music.
When I was on 'Dallas,' I was known to audiences of the '80s. And then when my sons, who are in their 30s now, were going to college, 'Dallas' was the cult thing to watch because it was being done on the soap channels, so a whole new generation saw it. And then I have the young fans that knew me from 'Step By Step' in the '90s.
In the '80s, I was the only one who didn't watch the shows about teenagers. I had to go over to friends' houses to see them. I still don't have a TV!
I always hated high-school shows and high-school movies, because they were always about the cool kids. It was always about dating and sex, and all the popular kids, and the good-looking kids. And the nerds were super-nerdy cartoons, with tape on their glasses. I never saw 'my people' portrayed accurately.
MTV was such a great training for me. I did live interviews with everyone from Michael Jackson to Madonna.
I worked at NBC and MTV for two years, and it was very interesting to see the comparisons of audiences and the way that I would have to present a story to the two different places.
I grew up watching a lot of stuff, like 'Teen Titans.'
I was a pioneer in MTV and I was there from the very beginning. So I saw how that developed and how loose it was and how much fun it was in its looseness. And I was influenced a lot by that.
I was inspired by a lot of people when I was young. Every band that came through town, to the theater, or the dance hall. I was at every dance, every night club, listened to every band that came through, because in those days we didn't have MTV, we didn't have television.