For me there is something primitively soothing about this music, and it went straight to my nervous system, making me feel ten feet tall.
Like a fool, I fell in love with you, Turned my whole world upside down
Musically, he was like an old man in a boy's skin.
If you hand me a guitar, I'll play the blues. That's the place I automatically go.
The thing about pessimism is that in most cases it's nothing more than a front behind which a body can hide its most sweetful yet painful hopes. please forgive mine.
I never set myself too high a goal. It was always tone and feeling, for me.
I am and always will be a blues guitarist
The music scene as I look at it today is a little different from when I was growing up. The percentages are roughly the same - 95 percent rubbish, 5 percent pure.
Watching him, I understood for the first time how you could really live music, how you could listen to it completely and make it come alive, so that it was part of your life.
All I am certain of right now is that I don't want to go anywhere, and that's not bad for someone who always used to run.
Early in my childhood, when I was about six or seven, I began to get the feeling that there was something different about me.
The point of being at home is to be with my family as much as possible.
I mean, it didn't matter to me that there were people, it didn't matter that I was shy Just the sound was so captivating that it helped me to get rid of those inhibitions.
The first one was quite cheap, but that was expensive for us. For my folks to buy on the Never Never. It was quite, you know, a rare object to have and I gained quite a lot of status by having this.
I mean, the sound of an amplified guitar in a room full of people was so hypnotic and addictive to me, that I could cross any kind of border to get on there.
An obsession is where something will not leave your mind.
Music became a healer for me. And I learned to listen with all my being. I found that it could wipe away all the emotions of fear and confusion relating to my family.
Let it grow, let it grow, Let it blossom let it flow. In the sun, the rain, the snow, Love is lovely, let it grow.
When all the original blues guys are gone, you start to realize that someone has to tend to the tradition. I recognize that I have some responsibility to keep the music alive, and it's a pretty honorable position to be in.
I remember when I thought of singing as the bit that went between the guitar playing - something I couldn't wait to get out of the way. Singing was originally like a chore that I didn't really enjoy.
But I did go to music really early on, even when I was 4 or 5, I was responding to music probably in ways other kids were not.
I've got the god given talent or the god given opportunity better put, to let that out in a harmless way you know, and I don't know what it does to you, I don't really know.
A British pressing with a compilation of the best stuff really, I mean actually not only that but, these were all kind of semi hits for the people on it in America.
When you're onstage with an electric band going through a massive P.A. system, it's very artificial. You can't really hear your own voice as it comes out of your mouth.
I think I deliberately sold out a couple of times. I picked the songs that I thought would do well in the marketplace, even though I didn't really love the song.
It's taken me to be an older guy, an old man, to have an old man's voice. Because I only liked old men's voices. As a kid, I didn't like pip-squeaked singers.
There's a desire in me to express something - to match what I hear in my head.
It was a mystery to me, how the tuning was, or the style seemed to come out of nowhere, it obviously had roots in America going way back, there was nothing like it for me I'd ever seen before.
Leave bands, go back to obscurity if I choose to, without a great sense of loss of security because it's all been based on the fact that I did it on my own or was doing, enjoying doing it on my own in the first place.
To sing in a lower key is harder work. You have to use your diaphragm more.
This moment in time, on this tour, you know, I'm discovering a lot of new things. And to be 45 and doing that, it's a mixture of pleasure and pain, I can assure you.
Although they can do it all the time, you know, they're far better than me, on a musically, on a theoretical music level. You know, they're out of my league.
I often enjoy singing in an acoustic setting more than an amplified one.
One summer I remember, I got exposed to Chuck Berry and Buddy Holly and Buddy Holly was a very very big, made a very big impression on me. Because of a lot of things, you know, the way he looked and his charisma.
Yeah, and I went straight into a fantasy world. Just stepped straight into the abyss. You know, I was gone and kids used to walk past my front room, cause I lived on the green.
I just like the company of beautiful women. I have a weakness in that department. And I suppose because I am fairly well off and a famous musician, I'm up for grabs. And that makes me an eligible bachelor in the press.
I don't have half the nerves there that I have anywhere else.
It was stumbling on to really the bible of the blues, you know, and a very powerful drug to be introduced to us and I absorbed it totally, and it changed my complete outlook on music.
They looked great, you know the drawings of the guys playing looked great and bits of string around their necks. So it didn't seem to be that difficult a thing to do, or that inaccessible.
I just like the company of beautiful women. I have a weakness in that department.
I wish I could write easily. I'm one of those guys who's visited by the muse when things are dire.
I tried when I was 13, when my grandparents gave me an acoustic guitar, and I tried for a year. It hurt so much to play. I mean, the fingertips hurt so much, I gave up.
'My Father's Eyes' is very personal. I realized that the closest I ever came to looking in my father's eyes was when I looked into my son's eyes.
Well, I think part of my gift, or if I have one, is that I love listening.
Given the choice between accomplishing something and just lying around, I'd rather lie around. No contest.
It is painful to relive things that have caused emotional crises or whatever and find ways to express that musically.
But the guitar, when you think about it, is the most versatile, really. I mean you can pick it up and take it with you wherever you go.
It's very dependent on your state of mind. And your emotional state as well. And a lot of it comes pouring out, you don't really have that much control with it.
In playing, I suppose my greatest gift was to express the way I felt or the willingness to express myself.
Yeah, I wanted to know where they got it from, what it was all about, you know, and it seemed to strike something in me that was you know rearing it's head and I still don't know what that is.
I grew up playing in clubs - that's my spiritual stomping ground.
I never met Johnny Rotten, and I didn't want to meet Johnny Rotten.
My original interests and intentions in guitar playing were primarily created on quality of tone, for instance, the way the instrument could be made to echo or simulate the human voice.
The first band I identified with from Chicago was the Muddy Waters band.
The toughest thing about being a celebrity, I suppose, is being polite when I don't want to be.
Music became a healer for me.
I don't know if I believe in luck. I think I'm very fortunate.
I'd love to knock an audience cold with one note, but what do you do for the rest of the evening?
The blues are what I've turned to, what has given me inspiration and relief in all the trials of my life.
I like solitude. I like the anomalous life. I like a quiet life.
My dedication to my music has driven everyone away. I've had girlfriends, but I always end up on my own. I don't particularly like it, but I don't see a way 'round it.
Risk is trying to control something you are powerless over.
One of the most beneficial things I've ever learned is how to keep my mouth shut.
I am, and always will be, a blues guitarist.
I think everybody has their own way of looking at their lives as some kind of pilgrimage. Some people will see their role as a pilgrim in terms of setting up a fine family, or establishing a business inheritance. Everyone's got their own definition. Mine, I suppose, is to know myself.
I remember hearing Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee, Big Bill Broonzy, Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley and not really knowing anything about the geography or the culture of the music. But for some reason it did something to me - it resonated.
I sought my father in the world of the black musician, because it contained wisdom, experience, sadness and loneliness. I was not ever interested in the music of boys. From my youngest years, I was interested in the music of men.
I listened to King Oliver and I listened to Louis Armstrong, Jelly Roll Morton, Thelonious Monk, Charles Mingus, John Coltrane, Archie Shepp... I listened to everything I could that came from that place that they call the blues but, in formality, isn't necessarily the blues.
Very much like that, and very much a loner, do you know and I didn't fit really into sport or all kind of group activities as a kid, I couldn't find a niche. And music was not really part of the kind of village curriculum it would, you know.
I used to do crazy things that people would bail me out of, and I'm just grateful that I survived. But the music got very lost; I didn't know where I was going, and I didn't really care. I was more into just having a good time, and I think it showed.
I think everybody has their own way of looking at their lives as some kind of pilgrimage. Some people will see their role as a pilgrim in terms of setting up a fine family, or establishing a business inheritance. Everyone's got their own definition.
I'm not a big fan of lead vocalists, people who sing but don't play. I never wanted to be in a band where the guy who was up front just sang. I've always thought it better when one of the musicians sings, like Steve Winwood.
From the beginning, I knew intuitively that if nothing else, music was safe, and that nobody could tell me anything about it. Music didn't need a middleman, whereas all the other things in school needed some kind of explanation.
Yeah, it is, because it's a real discovery of your inner resources, you know. That's what my character is all about and what my playing is all about. But to get up there and just go inside and draw out something that makes you feel good first and foremost.
I did play a lot of fingerstyle when I first started playing. I could never really find the right combination of flatpick or fingerpick, so playing fingerstyle is really the easiest way - though it's quite strenuous on the fingertips.
I just managed to convince my grandmother that it was a worth while that was something to do, you know, and when I did finally get the guitar, it didn't seem that difficult to me, to be able to make a good noise out of it.
The first guitar I ever had was a gut-string Spanish guitar, and I couldn't really get the hang of it. I was only 13, and I talked my grandparents into buying it for me. I tried and tried and tried, but got nowhere with it.
Oh yeah, I mean, it wasn't a very good guitar, most good guitars have got thrust rods in the necks that you can adjust or that'll keep them in shape, you know keep them straight. This one just, well it turned into a bow and arrow after a couple of months.
I feel a real need to observe a level of propriety in what I'm handing out. Instead of me just venting or spilling my guts, I've got to consider how it's going to affect people. How it's going to affect me, as well. Because it's like a cycle.
