Curtis Mayfield

If there's hell below, we're all gonna go.

My teacher told me I'd never amount to anything. I left high school at 15, after one year. But my real teachers were all the people around me. And I was a good listener.

How many 54-year-old quadriplegics are putting albums out? You just have to deal with what you got, try to sustain yourself as best you can, and look to the things that you can do.

Reading the script, I started feeling very deeply bad for Freddie. Between his friends, his partners, and his woman, he was catching a hard time. 'Freddie's Dead' came to me immediately.

I was a very observant child. Almost anything could become a song to me.

I don't like to appoint myself to nothing, knowing I'm no better than anybody else. But it always makes me feel good to know I try to do the best I can, and those who might observe say, 'Hey, I can take a little something from that person.'

Everything was a song. Every conversation, every personal hurt, every observance of people in stress, happiness and love... if you could feel it, I could feel it. And I could write a song about it.

Being a young black man, observing and sensing the need for race equality and women's rights, I wrote about what was important to me.