I think doing a record with B.B. King allowed me the opportunity to blend two different generations across the board and make a song that I hope is extremely impactful.
Nobody is playing music like this, like the Allman Brothers, and there's still a lot of fans out there, so that's what we're doing with Les Brers.
They use all of the music that I did in the '50s, '60s and the '70s behind people like Tupac and LL Cool J. I'm into all that stuff.
Unfortunately, the young generation, who I believe have their own place in the sun like I had mine; but I wish it was possible there were other ways to have them understand this music was here before they came, and the reason that it was here.
Led Zeppelin, they still rule the airwaves. I hear Zeppelin every day, and they've been around since '69. So the people who grew up with that still listen to that, and now their children listen to it.
I have mad love for the way we were taught and trained back in the day. I mean, those of us - like Chaka Khan, Patti LaBelle, Gladys Knight - we didn't give into this new wave of celebrity.
More people seem to know the Van der Graaf Generator material than my solo work - thanks, I suppose, to their parents' lingering vinyl collections.
I want to bring that old soul back, the meaningful lyrics and all of that. And I can't think of a better way to do that than through Motown.
A lot of festivals on a worldwide basis that I am seeing, they're trying to multi-genre it. Like, they put a wild card band on, like, us old guys that happen to have a record that has stayed in pop culture for as long as it has.
I've been singing Rodgers and Hammerstein all my life.
