The last thing I wanted to do was put politics into my music . . . because music was my escape.

We do have the power to save one another . . .

I cannot imagine a world without music. It would be . . . well, I cannot imagine it.

'Get on Your Feet' is really my motto. I look always forward. I look ahead. That's why I choose to record that song, because I really love the message.

There can be no music without ideology. The old composers, whether they knew it or not, were upholding a political theory. Most of them, of course, were bolste…

I call it treason against rock 'n' roll because rock is the antithesis of politics. Rock should never be in bed with politics. ... When I was a kid and my pare…

You ask if I would have been different without 'Party guidance'? Yes, almost certainly. No doubt the line I was pursuing when I wrote the Fourth Symphony would…