PART I

BLVR: Why did you move to Nashville?

BB: I never envisioned that I would move into a brand-new house and start a brand-new life here the year I turned sixty. I came down here to sing on an Eddy Arnold tribute record and through that I met Eddy Arnold’s grandson and his wife, and they became mentors and dear friends. And I feel younger and freer and more inspired than I did the day I turned thirty.

BLVR: You were a different kind of “woman in music” when you first started running with the rock crowd. Tell me about that.

BB: I feel like I have fought my whole life: stop calling me names. Stop defining me; stop telling me that I am this or I’m that. Why don’t you say, “Man, you had really good taste in men.” Or “That must have been really cool dating him.” You know what I mean? And the way society looks at women, it’s always “What is it about you that that man wanted to be with you?” And I’m thinking to myself, “What is it about him that would make me want to be with him?” Relationships are a two-way street.

PART II

BLVR: What baffles me is that you were able to move through these relationships with these really intense people.

BB: I was never married. That’s not a judgment. I just never saw myself as a taken woman very often, even when I was with Todd all those years. We always saw, in private and not-soprivate, other people. It was the era. It was the time. Maybe if we had been married, it would have been different. But I find that those kinds of relationships tend to be very damaging to your psyche. I don’t care what anyone says. There’s nothing abnormal about not feeling OK, or feeling jealous, when the person you are with is with another person. It hurts a lot. When you’re a young girl you might act things out in a different way. My way of acting out was “Well, OK, I’ll date Mick Jagger, then.”

PART III

BLVR: You wrote a book called Rebel Heart, which was a New York Times best seller. Reading it, I was interested in how you remained intact in perilous situations involving betrayal and drugs and general craziness.

BB: I think it’s in my DNA. I am meant to conquer my demons and I’m meant to surpass the handicaps. I know now why I didn’t marry Todd Rundgren and I didn’t marry Steven Tyler. I know now why they have the roles they have in my life now, as opposed to then. I thought...