I was obsessed with 'The Velvet Rope' for a year straight, letting Janet Jackson's confessional lyrics lull me to sleep and comfort me when I felt lost. I felt that the album was the vehicle onto which Janet finally expressed her full self.
There's two different disks recorded at two different shows. And they're two very different shows. The San Francisco disk was in front of 450 people and was a real professional show where people did their best stuff. So to some people that's going to be their favorite disk.
I try and be just completely me on stage. I try and put that across, and people seem to get that personality that I have, so I do try not to become two different people and two different faces.
I really don't think the success Michael has had, or Janet, has made It harder for me. In many ways it really enhances the situation. I don't have to worry about name recognition, for instance.
I love getting to have different food and getting to be around different people and different cultures and different ways people look at life. It's really kind of helped me open up my mind and see the world from different perspectives.
I grew up having two different perspectives - one in English, one in Spanish. Two different cultures, very different - but I think that, to me, it's one. I'm just as American as I feel Latin.
George: [On the 'Two Virgins' cover] 'What I thought of the sleeve then was the same as I think now: it's just two not-very-nice-looking bodies, two flabby bodies naked. It's harmless, really - different strokes for different folks.
It took two," I said. "Two different people to make the Heartwood what it is. Two different experiences, grief and joy, combined. True love never has just one face, does it? It must always have two, or it isn't true love at all.
I just watch a lot of different films and different TV shows. Really for me, it's just looking at how people react to different shows in different genres. For me, it's more a study of people than a study of acting.
One of my ongoing projects is to expand third-eye technology whereby two people can watch two different things on a screen or type in two different languages on the same surface - all they have to do is wear a pair of hi-tech glass spectacles.
The reason I did the name change is simple. I wrote a bunch of autobiographical material and I was really enjoying myself doing it, and in two of the songs I quote two different people (referring to me as Mr. Stace). And it just hit me at some point that it was ludicrous for me to think of myself as Wesley Stace, publish novels as Wesley Stace, be Wesley Stace and not have it released as Wesley Stace.
I know that sounds dramatic, but shooting everything twice and going through the emotions of two different humans was crazy for me at 16. In terms of my career, that was something that really, really formed me.
I love a good lyricist - always have. The thing that inspired me most was the different performers, like Tina Turner, James Brown, Michael Jackson, Madonna, even Janet Jackson.
I had this whole Slim Shady concept of being two different people, having two different sides of me. One of them I was trying to let go, and I looked at the mirror and smashed it. That was the whole intro of the Slim Shady EP. Slim Shady was coming to haunt me.
Different people call me different things. In America, people really struggle with my name, so I don't have a nickname as such. I've had Sharlito, Sheldon, Charldo, really interesting variations on the name.
I've been at two different high schools, two different colleges, so I've learned some new playbooks, and that always helps me.