They say the music you listen to in your formative years stays with you and leaves an impression for the rest of your life. For me, the things that I fell in love with happened in the '70s, when artists were nurtured by record companies and it wasn't about singles.
There's no single movement out there. It's not like in the '60s, when Revolver came out and that's just it for the next year.
I don't really listen to contemporary R&B with an ear for hearing my influence. Music is a spirit unto itself, and all of us musicians influence each other all along the chain.
When I first started making ambient music, I was setting up systems using synthesizers that generated pulses more or less randomly. The end result is a kind of music that continuously changes. Of course, until computers came along, all I could actually present of that work was a piece of its output.
I was heavily influenced by big voices when I was younger. People like Whitney Houston, Aretha Franklin, and Patti Labelle really spoke to me. When I got older, I was into Erykah Badu, Jill Scott, and Lauryn Hill, but it wasn't until I started working with a voice coach that I really dove into jazz music.
The Righteous Brothers got so heavy because of the dramatic hit records like 'Lovin' Feelin.' Bobby and I just felt like we were a couple of Orange County guys who were just having a great time singing rock n' roll, and then, boy, it became something else.
If you're a pop singer, you don't need to evolve. You just get a set together, have some hit songs and play them over and over.
From folk to tribal to Cab Calloway, Cole Porter, Gershwin to the Rolling Stones, whose first record was all covers, to country-western, bebop, blues, and even the referencing in classic hip hop to cliched love ballads of the '80s or whatever - that is kinda gone, and that's just terrifying to me.
A violin is nothing more than a piece of wood and a dead cat. But it's a piece of technology. So when computers came along, in the '70s, I suddenly thought, hang on a second, this is interesting. These things can become an instrument. So I just became very interested in them, and started, playing with electronics.
Or like in the early 70's when we had the reaction against acid rock and all the fuzz tone, and feedback, and the noise. And you had James Taylor and everyone went acoustic and that.
I was always into classical music and opera because I played the piano as I went through school and was very interested in Andrew Lloyd Webber musicals and stuff like that. That changed into heavy metal at around the age of 14 or 13, and I dropped the piano and started to play the guitar.
In a way, the traditional album is no longer as important as it used to be. But at the same time, I don't want to be the kind of artist who just releases one song after another.
I have been working and composing music since 1986. Over the years, I have seen our music industry go through all kinds of transformation.
I think we're in a very low point of music right now.
I remember when I was coming up, the music stores where you could get guitar strings was where I got my records from. Now the place where you get your records from is where you can get your DJ mats and your mixers.
The electric guitar was a big step for me, but I didn't spend a lot of time trying to adjust. It wasn't like, 'Hey, little lady, come strap on this here big guitar.' We took it in steps as much as possible.
I remember hearing people like Joe Cocker, Fleetwood Mac, and Elvis. My parents were big fans of them, and they were the early seeds. My brother was more into Slipknot, and I still listen to them, too, but it wasn't until I listened to Paolo Nutini that it really clicked.
Why would heavy metal ever go away?
There was no hip-hop before Afrika Bambaataa.
R&B is my home. It's who I am. It's who I've been. It's the first genre I fell in love with. It's the reason why I've been able to do other genres of music.
My first record wasn't even with the Fugees. I was signed to Big Beat Records, so I was signed back in 1989 to the label that the Knocks are on now. You can always tell which generation had the pulse based on how they see things.
When I was younger, I was a rave kid trapped inside a singer/songwriter's body. But I kind of figured my way out because I started making these really terrible beats on this Yamaha keyboard that my parents got me for my 10th birthday.
Hip hop is the new rock n' roll, you know what I mean? And anybody who doesn't think that is just sort of living in the past. It's all just American music, really, when you get right down to it.
I had a solo career before Van Halen. My fan base filtered through Van Halen with me and came right on out the other side with me.
As a teen, I enjoyed Sufi music and ghazals the most. But as my career began, I drifted off to playback and other streams over the years.
