The biggest inspiration I had was to take norteno soul music and fuse it with Mexican music. It was my great big idea to do that.

I had a lot of luck in meeting great musicians who were kind enough to show me things.

You can play as good as you want, but you have to sing from a place of living.

Music is a treasure hunt. You dig and dig, and sometimes you find something.

I've listened to blues my whole life. I know it, I play it, I understand it.

A microphone has a certain range. It's not as good as your ears, but it will capture an enclosed space, the harmonic content in a room. Nice old tube mikes do that pretty well. And that's a good sound.

It's crazy to make records nobody buys. It's just a waste of time.

I didn't want tunes that preach heaven: you know, life on Earth is bad and heaven is the only hope we have. I don't quite care for that. I mean, when people sing that stuff, it's good when they do it, but I didn't want to do it.

That's what records do: represent a compressed, heightened version of the sound. Because of the compression of the tubes and microphones and the wax, it's magic!

Music is all starting to sound alike in the modern era. Afro-pop sounds exactly like L.A. pop - there's no difference, no ambience, no real resonance.

People respond to any good you can do in music.

If every song is in the past tense, that's a drag, so you have to predict the future.

I'm a great lover of ballads.

The world will always love Cuban music, however it changes.

I think I'm more relaxed; I think I'm more philosophical. I don't get worried as much as I used to about things.

I like the idea that something happens to everybody who comes to L.A. - whether they are Mexican, Irish, black, or hillbillies. You come here, and you leave all your traditions behind. And since there's no traditions here, you just make one up.

Some people have career plans, long-range career plans. I don't know anything about that. I'm no good at it.

Film work is a job I like to do because I really love to solve problems.

I didn't come from a very rigid background, where there's a clan or a tribe or a religion.

How many BMWs do you need? How many Rolex watches you gonna wear in your lifetime, for crying out loud? What is it about that kind of desire? I don't understand it.

Sure, immigrants will do work that no-one else will do. There was even a movie about it - 'A Day Without Mexicans.'

What kills music in films is when it's done as performance, drawing attention to the fact that someone's in the background playing it.

When I was little, 4 or 5 years old, the first guitar I had was given to me by a blacklisted violinist - a lefty, commie guy, pinko man.

You go through these phases. That's how life is. Over the long term, you just can't do one thing. I saw that back in the Sixties when I was getting started.