My dad taught me to play bass. He's a bass player he still plays in a band in Michigan to this day. He taught me to play bass when I was about 6. I used to just go to band practice with him and whoever didn't show up for rehearsal that day I would take their spot.

Dad and mom would have preferred that I be a doctor a lawyer a scientist or a great humanitarian.

Both my mum and dad were great readers and we would go every Saturday morning to the library and my sister and I had a library card when we could pass off something as a signature and all of us would come with an armful of books.

One thing my dad always told me was he would make sure I always had what he didn't have. He couldn't play basketball because he didn't have tennis shoes - so I had five pairs of tennis shoes.

When I was growing up my mother would say 'Your dad may have to learn about being a father because he lost his own and that would have affected him'.

It was tough at the time but when I was younger my Dad. I would say my Dad because without him I wouldn't have been here. I mean it was tough for me because he was really demanding. With him it was never enough you know anything I did was never enough.

When I was a kid my step dad started this business and would go out and get lost cows and stuff. He was part-time truck driver farmer and cowboy. He taught me how to ride from an early age.

My dad had this rock hard body and would work 12- to 13-hour days. The guys he worked with were scrap-iron guys. Nobody on that road crew had read a book in 10 years but there was something about the way they lived I really admired.

As a father now I wouldn't do what my dad did because it left me feeling emotionally unstable as a kid. But he didn't do the things he did out of selfishness or malice.

I loved climbing because of the freedom and having time and space. I remember coming off Everest for the last time thinking of Dad and wishing that he could have seen what I saw. He would have loved it.

The one thing that kept our family together was the music. The only thing that our family would share emotionally was to have our dad cry over something the kids did with music.

My guess is my brother would call his mom and his dad pretty regularly a lot more than I probably did.

My parents were kind of over protective people. Me and my sister had to play in the backyard all the time. They bought us bikes for Christmas but wouldn't let us ride in the street we had to ride in the backyard. Another Christmas my dad got me a basketball hoop and put it in the middle of the lawn! You can't dribble on grass.

I watched Italia '90 with my Mum and Dad and my brother you know leaping around the house when the penalties were on... It would be great to be part of that to have that kind of impact.

My dad's side of the family had lots of artists and musicians. There's an emotional quite sentimental quality to Slavic culture. It's very open it loves art it loves music it loves literature. It's very warm it's very up it's very down. I would celebrate that.

I would have to say the person with whom I am most in love is definitely my son Everly Bear. Although I'm his dad I'm also his friend.

During the Depression my dad made radios to sell to make extra money. Nobody had any money to buy the radios so he would trade them for dogs. He built kennels in the backyard and he cared for the dogs.