A Quote by Etta James
My mother always told me, even if a song has been done a thousand times, you can still bring something of your own to it. I'd like to think I did that.
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I think that you find your own way. You have your own rules. You have your own understanding of yourself, and that's what you're going to count on. In the end, it's what feels right to you. Not what your mother told you. Not what some actress told you. Not what anybody else told you but the still, small voice.
There were a lot of times in the Cleveland and Chicago organizations when I did something, they wanted to make sure the camera was there. I really didn't want that. This isn't something my parents told me to do. Or something my family told me to do. Or do things for publicity. I do this on my own. I do this from my heart.
Even if I'm doing a show and there's five people in the audience and the sound system is terrible - I mean, it's been a while but I've certainly done those kind of shows where it's just every conceivable thing is against you - you still have music. It's still something that's real whether there's five people in the audience or a hundred thousand people in the audience. And that's always been there for me.
For me [being a kid actor], it's a bit like when you see your mom's friends, and they're like, "I remember when you were this big. You'll always be that cute little kid to me." It's like that times a thousand. Well, times a couple thousand.
I always think that you should never, ever force a producer to do something with a song that they don't think they can do something fantastic with, I think it's a stupid idea to force it, even if you think it's your best song.
When you use a sample in a big way, when you loop something in the way I did with 'Runaround Sue,' it's like you have your chords and your melody and the quality of the song right there before you add your own production. It's like the song is already made, in a sense.
Musically, though, you're a character and you're singing a song. If you're not your own character, you're the character in the song, most of the time. Even blues musicians, a lot of them who were the most realistic, at times, they were singing a song and portraying a character in the song. There's something to be said for getting involved in the emotion of a song, too, with the characters.
It's weird because I think of movies like Reality Bites or something, where, even though my life was nothing like that, I hadn't done something contemporary for a while, and it's easier. You do try to make something your own.
Whenever I think I know something is a classic, or an amazing song, I realise it's still so subjective, because you and your friends could be talking about something, say, '(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction' - an amazing classic song - or someone would be like, "'Hey Jude' is an amazing song!", and I'd be like, "I don't really like it."
I remember yelling at my mother one time, horribly. I was in tenth grade or something like that, and I hadn't done something, and she misunderstood because my stepfather told her something that was wrong that I hadn't done.
He saw us play a few times in fact. I did this song called I Can't Keep From Crying Sometimes, and Jimi loved it. He paid me a huge compliment when he told me that he was thinking of doing something similar himself!
There will always be times where you think, 'What went wrong? Why wasn't that one more popular?' You can't always figure that out, especially if you think you've done the best job you can do and was interesting to you. I mean, 'My Soul to Take,' I thought should have done much better, and I still like that film a lot.
So what that he had children with other women? He was always truthful, he always told me when another child was on the way. He would even bring the babies to me when they were born, and sometimes I would even bring them up myself.
There's still people that do it poorly... and people that do it very, very well. I think there's still an incredible spectrum. I guess there's something that's appealing in it, in that everyone on some level is a DJ. But people still go to clubs, and there's still... it is interesting - with everyone having an iPod now - when music is so personalised and things like Pandora and making your own playlists, there's something really powerful about a room full of people all dancing to the same song.
My mother always told me, 'I didn't make a perfume or go sell toilet paper. I did something good with my name.'
I've always been willing to take challenges, I grew up taking challenges: being an only child, having a mother, no father, I've always been one who has always done things the way I thought they should be done and not, and not having to answer to anybody for it and I've always taken my own chances and I've always followed by instincts according, mother would follow, follow wit, instincts, wisdom, whatever, always followed that.
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