I always say adolescence is a war for everybody – no one gets out unscathed. But, at 16, I was pretty mainstream. I was a basketball player. That was my obsession. I was captain of the basketball team – maybe that was when I was 17 – and president of the student council. So I was a frighteningly normal and mainstream high school student at that point.
I lived in a town where you were expected to excel. Many of the students at my school went on to top colleges. It was quite competitive. Both my brothers went to Yale undergraduate and Harvard Law School. They both graduated early and had perfect SAT scores. So it was a competitive town. My parents were pretty good about it, though. They were an interesting team, my parents. My mother was louder, more outgoing – and they knew how to keep the pressure on subtly.
That’s who I grew up on. We didn’t have a lot of albums, then we got into and . And in my senior year, he came out with . I don’t think you could find an artist with a stronger first four albums.
