I think I turned to writing really just to wake up in the morning and be a musician and to have something to do, and feel like a musician every day even if I wasn't working.

I can remember in the early 60s that there were a couple of really dynamic women performers at the time - Brenda Lee, there was Connie Francis.

It's my party and I'll cry if I want to.

I just kind of lived my life naturally and did what I wanted to do.

You know, Quincy Jones was a great mentor, but he was a man in a man's world. Fortunately he's a very sensitive man and a beautiful human being, and even though he was 14 or 15 years older than me, he's a capable human being and has great communication skills.

Given that there was that era of girl group music and it's still very popular, but I think if you looked at the chart from that time you would see many more men on it. Because the industry, they were catering to young girls. I mean, that's what they thought their audience was.

I think the record industry, by and large what's left of it, is still totally homophobic. I think it's much less so in the film industry now, but the record industry, it's always been a man's world.

You can only bite off so much, so you gotta know what you want to do.

And that's what got me to the piano, that's what got me up in the morning: a blank piece of paper and a hope to have something by the end of the day.

You know, the interesting thing about having traveled around the country as much as I have, and I think it's sort of inadvertently what made me come out or at least begin doing things within the community and thinking more about that, was that I get to travel quite a bit.