When I walked back into that factory for the first time after seven or eight years, it was a pretty emotional moment because all the people came up and embraced me.
My father was a minister for 50 years with Pentecostal Church of God in Christ. We prayed about everything, every day, then he always said, "Amen. God is love." I thought God is love was one word. Like "Godislove." And it took me a long time to learn what that really meant.
I've spent so much time the last seven, eight years in Los Angeles, away from my family, away from my friends, away from the city that is my favourite place to be and I just want to come here and have a proper life.
I've spent so much time the last seven, eight years in Los Angeles, away from my family, away from my friends, away from the city that is my favorite place to be and I just want to come here and have a proper life.
Certainly, writing a book was challenging. It took me a long time to learn how to do it. It took me seven years to get a sense of how to wean myself off the process and trickery of songwriting. You realize that giant metaphors work in songs because you have so few words. Standing alone on a page, they threaten to be overblown in a hurry.
In the late '60s, I was seven, eight, nine years old, and what was going on in the news at that time that really excited a seven, eight, nine year old boy was the Space Race.
I went to work at seven in the morning. Around noon time we got the watery soup. And we worked until seven or eight or nine at night, sometimes later. And then I walked back home - there was no public transportation - into that shared room. And if there was food we would prepare an evening meal depending on what was available. And then probably go to bed because it was cold most the time. And then start the day all over again, six or seven days a week.
I got a very late start at fatherhood. I'm a late bloomer in general. It took me seven years to get through four years of college. I was five years away from 40 before I had a family, and I had never been around kids much at all. All of a sudden, I was around three boys all the time.
Yeah, I am in love. I'm definitely in love. She picked me up in a bar, actually. She walked by and just looked at me and smiled and I went 'Hey' and she goes, 'Hey'. I was just like, 'Oh my God', she took my breath away.
I learned more of how to appreciate what I had then - my family, my kids, the talent that God gives you - because He can take it away at any time. He took it away from Brian through death. He took it away from me through my knees.
I got into music around the age of eight years old, and I think the reason why was because I discovered the Spice Girls. I fell in love with them, and it was the first time I ever felt like the music was just directed to me.
You either like me or you don't. It took me twenty-something years to learn how to love myself, I don't have that kinda time to convince somebody else.
It took me two years to walk around a chair with ease; it took me another two years to learn how to laugh onstage - and I had to learn everything.
I have a really big family, and pretty much all my work is about my brothers and sisters. I'm the youngest of eight - my mom had seven kids in seven years, and then she had me 11 years later - so I was basically raised by all these teenagers.
My mom took me to a taekwondo class, and I fell in love. I was seven years old.
I didn't take a break from making music, but I took some time away from the "need to sell it" thing, and moved to my hometown, Umeå. I took my time there, exploring music on my own, on a very personal level.