Later Years
In 1981, McKuen retired from live performances. The following year, he was diagnosed with clinical depression, which he battled for much of the next decade. He continued to write poetry, however, and made appearances as a voice-over actor in The Little Mermaid and the TV series The Critic.
McKuen's latest book is A Safe Place to Land, which contains 160 pages of new poetry. For ten years he gave an annual birthday concert at Carnegie Hall or the Lincoln Center. His latest album is a double CD, The Platinum Collection. He is currently remastering all of his RCA and Warner Bros. recordings for release as CD boxed sets. In addition to his artistic pursuits, for the past 19 years he has been the president of the American Guild of Variety Artists, a post he has held longer than any other man or woman elected to the position.
McKuen lives in Southern California with his brother and four cats in a large rambling Spanish house built in 1928, which houses one of the world's largest private record collections.
Read more about this topic: Rod McKuen
Famous quotes containing the word years:
“[F]rom Saratoga [N.Y.] till we got back to Northampton [Mass.], was then mostly desert. Now it is what 34. years of free and good government have made it. It shews how soon the labor of man would make a paradise of the whole earth, were it not for misgovernment, and a diversion of all his energies from their proper object, the happiness of man, to the selfish interests of kings, nobles and priests.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)
“Money itself isn’t lost or made, it’s simply transferred from one perception to another. This painting here. I bought it 10 years ago for 60 thousand dollars. I could sell it today for 600. The illusion has become real and the more real it becomes, the more desperately they want it.”
—Oliver Stone (b. 1946)