My dad being an Army officer, I was just born to it. I was raised in a military manner, and it was a given that Army brats went to West Point, so I went to West Point in 1941. And being in the military has been my life.
I was in awe of my father. His generosity was beyond anything I ever could imagine. The reason I say he's like Don Corleone is he was always breaking off hundreds. I'd be like, 'Hey Dad, I'm going to McDonald's with my friends,' and he'd just whip out a hundred: 'Here, go, have fun.'
Now that I'm a dad, I'm practicing what I call 'one- handed cooking,' because I've got something more important in my other arm. I'm whipping up lots of frittatas and omelets.
My hat was pulled down and this girl said 'Are you really him?' I whispered 'Yeah, I'm really him.' She screamed, 'Mom! Dad! It's Heath Ledger!
Dressing up used to be more of a thing. My dad wore a suit always. Now you think, why bother?
My dad grew up in western Nebraska. I'd visit all the time as a kid, and it's very much like the Wild West. It felt to me like a cowboy movie. Stuff like that made me become this dreamer at a young age.
With Dad, he was the ultimate wildlife warrior, and we admired him more than anything.
I think the word 'woke' is now over. The first time I heard my mature, white dad use that term, I was like 'OK, this is done.'
I missed my dad a lot growing up, even though we were together as a family. My dad was really a workaholic. And he was always working.
'Wings' offered me the rare opportunity to be a full-time dad and a working actor for eight years.
Mum is a photographer, and Dad does world music and plays almost every instrument except for drums.
I never trained in pro wrestling with The Sheik, but I did amateur wrestling with pro wrestlers in my dad's basement.
In the '60s, I sat with my dad in frozen Wrigley Field at Bears games.
Growing up I always watched WWF with my dad on Saturdays. It was our thing!
A military childhood in the 1950s was very much informed by WWII. My brothers and I often heard stories from our dad - and from other kids - about things that had happened to their dads. We constantly played war games and, nearly every Saturday, saw a different WWII movie at the post theater.
When I sat down with all the songs before recording, I realised I'd written a few songs specifically about places in America - there was this song about Detroit and another about Yellowstone National Park. My dad is actually American, so I wrote another song about that side of my family.
My dad was raised Orthodox in Atlanta. He speaks Hebrew. He speaks Yiddish. He married a Jewish woman who is not Orthodox, so I was brought up by two different kinds of Jews.
My dad played football, too, in the former Yugoslavia.
I remember being in St. Lucia and my dad taking me out on a jet ski. I was very young, too young, but, yup, dad does like to break rules.
