Back then people closed their eyes and listened to music. Today there's a lot of images that go with the music. A lot of music is crap and it's all commercial and the images are all trying to sell the record.

My mother knew how to read music and everything. But I just kinda learned off of records. And so I was listening to records and I'd play 'em over and over.

Sometimes before we make a record I go back and listen to a few. It's equally humbling and uplifting.

I'm always happy when I hear about people selling records or selling books or selling movies. It makes me proud of them.

I'd love to act more. I've had to turn down multiple movies because I was on tour but it's encouraging to know that someday there might be the right role the right timing. And I've been writing a lot of music so hopefully very soon I'll have recorded a project of my own. I also want to get a boat and open a restaurant.

I'm very particular about the kind of music that I record and sing and it would be the same way about the kind of movies that I would do.

I've had such a great track record in making a huge profit when the movies are smaller.

But then I go through long periods where I don't listen to things usually when I'm working. In between the records and in between the writing I suck up books and music and movies and anything I can find.

I made two movies before The Police had a hit record: I did Quadrophenia and a film called Radio On.

I could wake up six in the morning go downstairs and record. I learned how to use ProTools and everything. Whenever I felt it I could record.

I can't record in the morning because I sound like Barry White.

The four of us couldn't have made a record with the time left over when we were shooting the show. We were on stage from 7.30 in the morning 'til 7 at night. Later on when there was a break from filming and we were sick of doing it the old way.

Of all the songs I've recorded 'Amarillo By Morning' always sticks out in my mind.

Most songs have meager beginnings. You wake up in the morning you throw on your suspenders and you subvocalize and just think. They seem to form like calcium. I can't think of a story right off the bat that was that interesting. I write things on the back of my hand usually and sing into a tape recorder.

I used to get my money at the end of the week buy my mum something or buy a record and that was it.

A development deal is where they're giving you recording time and money to record but not promising that they'll put an album out.

I've looked at pictures that my mom has of me from when I was four years old at the turntable. I'm there reaching up to play the records. I feel like I was bred to do what I do. I've been into music and listening to music and critiquing it my whole life.

My mom loved to sing - and I'll go on record and say she was the worst singer ever. I'd get up and move away from her!

No matter what like I couldn't - I could break a world record get an Olympic gold medal and my mom would be like you could have done better. But you looked pretty. That's what she says all the time.

My mom played the recorder. But not having electricity we had minimal exposure to music. As I got a little older we had Walkmans and things that were battery-powered but it would have been nice to be growing up in the iPod era. A tape only has six songs on a side.

I have lots of records quite a collection actually that I stole from my mom. I have the original 'Thriller' album and I have a really great 'Elton John's Greatest Hits ' and I also have a N.E.R.D. album. Records sound more original. They have more edge.

If I have any talent at all it's from God and my mom who was on Capitol Records also.

I grew up in Marcy Projects in Brooklyn and my mom and pop had an extensive record collection so Michael Jackson and Stevie Wonder and all of those sounds and souls of Motown filled the house.

My mom and I used to listen to records read and take train rides across the country in the summer. It was a very chill life. She didn't expose me to anything that was ahead of my development but she expected me to adjust to her world - she did not expect to adjust to mine.