Dabbling in music and being in music when I was young I had my own view of what I thought music was whether it was jazz, r&b, or hip hop.
I think all the covers I do have nice sentiments, particularly 'Your Song.' People write me very sweet messages about that song, though I'm sure there are people out there saying that I've ruined it too!
In a sense, a hit belongs to the person who made it popular, but if a tune is good enough to attain tremendous success, then it certainly deserves more than one version, one treatment, one approach.
You're always going to get comparisons. Everybody comes out and says, 'He's the next so and so,' or, 'He reminds me of so and so.' I have so many influences and stuff in my brain, who knows what's going to pop in and come out.
In other words, musicians know that going back to the Spoonful, what we were doing was not copying.
You can see it on the Internet: There's an argument going on continually about, 'What is folk music?' And I don't really want to get involved in that. It's an endless argument, a 'How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?' kind of argument.
Very few people do covers of my tunes.
There are so many different versions of "Tennessee Waltz" and they're all so good.
