Bowie's 'Hunky Dory' influenced me. 'Ziggy Stardust' influenced Johnny Ramone a lot, especially his guitar parts.

In high school, I got into folk music, and I taught myself guitar. And when The Beatles came out, I got an electric guitar.

Our music is an answer to the early Seventies when artsy people with big egos would do vocal harmonies and play long guitar solos and get called geniuses.

Mostly I listen to old-time music, some bluegrass, some Americana stuff, too many to name. But of the younger acts, there are The Freight Hoppers, who were big in the '90s, and The Foghorn Stringband from Oregon, and there's a lot of young string bands coming up now, basically punkers who play acoustic instruments forming new bands.

I was born in Budapest, Hungary, and moved to the United States in 1956. It was during the Hungarian Revolution when Russian tanks rolled into Budapest, and my family - me, my brother, and my parents - escaped over the border to Austria. We just took whatever we could carry. It was perilous, but we made it across.

Johnny Carson started the jokes about me and Marlin in his monologues.