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The first song I fell in love with
I Want to Hold Your Hand and She Loves You by the Beatles are like my villain origin story. I was two years old and have no conscious memory of life before that. I can remember walking around our little apartment in East Orange, New Jersey, singing those songs.
The first album I bought
I grew up in a fundamentalist Christian conservative family. Remember Footloose? It was exactly like that. No dancing, no movies, no records. My aunt bought me Stevie Wonder’s Journey Through the Secret Life of Plants and I fell in love with Send One Your Love.
The song I inexplicably know every lyric to
[Sings]: “Of war and peace the truth just twists / Its curfew gull just glides / Upon four-legged forest clouds / The cowboy angel rides.” I learned Gates of Eden by Bob Dylan when I was really young. I was mesmerised by this voice of an Old Testament prophet who had reincarnated itself into modern times.
The song I do at karaoke
I’ve never been drawn to karaoke. I was talked into it in Japan, after copious amounts of whatever the hell was being drunk, and doing Tiptoe Through the Tulips by Tiny Tim. Japan is fascinating. You have a drink, the next thing there are 30 people dressed as bunnies or Godzilla doing a dance routine.
The best song to have sex to
Get It Up by the Time. You need some extra motivation when you pass 60.
The best song to play at a party
I Love Onions by Susan Christie. I always say the best song to play is the one that gets people to leave.
The song I secretly like, but tell everyone I hate
As a boy, there were certain things that it wasn’t smart to acknowledge you liked, such as Barbra Streisand. I’m a huge fan of the Carpenters, but I couldn’t admit it back then, else I’d have guys trying to beat the Carpenters out of me.
The song that changed my life
I remember being 10, in 1972, living in Daytona beach. My cousins lived two blocks down the road. One day my mother got a call: they had something to show me. I cycled over and they played me Superstition by Stevie Wonder. It was one of those moments when your world shifts.
The song that makes me cry
I’m a complainer more than a crier. I make other people cry! If I’m in the right spirit, I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry by Hank Williams, with the line: “And as I wonder where you are / I’m so lonesome, I could cry.” They used to call him the Hillbilly Shakespeare.
The song I want played at my funeral
As a native-derived person, we don’t believe in death. Death is a western, fear-based concept. We believe that an eternal spirit is housed into a temporary vehicle, and when that vehicle no longer becomes tenable to inhabit, we just move on. If I had to play music, I’d insist on Beethoven’s Triple Concerto.
Sananda Maitreya is on tour to 6 November.
