With the other fellow actors who have gone astray, I think it's sad that society wants to label the business as doing this to people. It's really not true.
When entertainment was begun, during the Depression, it was supposed to take people's minds off reality. People could sing, dance, act or do anything. It was the type of entertainment that was available.
Things went in a direction that I didn't want to go. I started doing bit parts and things that are pretty much laid out for people in my position. The parts were pretty generic.
The people that watch or buy music or listen to TV, I don't think they separate the two as much as the people that are in charge of the production of it.
The music and everything we're doing on the stage and on television backs itself up. If that's what gets people's curiosity going or brings their attention to us, that's fine.
My parents were involved in everything I did. They were showbiz people themselves. My dad was an actor. They were parents; they did what parents are supposed to do.
Generally speaking, if people are prepared to stick their heads above the power pit, like Zinn says, and absorb what's going on around them, it makes them think.
If we got into a situation where people start burning our records, then bring it on. That's the whole point. The gloaming has begun. We're in the darkness. This has happened before. Go read some history.
I think maybe since there isn't a great deal of access to the mainstream media and people don't understand the language of mainstream media, if you put music out there with lyrics that are loosely political, people absorb some of it and spit it back out.
One of the interesting things here is that the people who should be shaping the future are politicians. But the political framework itself is so dead and closed that people look to other sources, like artists, because art and music allow people a certain freedom.
We bought an apartment building and were going to live off the rent money. We rented to people who were on welfare and a lot of times they couldn't pay the rent. We wouldn't throw them out so we lost the building.
