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.
I don’t know if I believe in luck. I think I’m very fortunate.
I am, and always will be, a blues guitarist.
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.
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.
An obsession is where something will not leave your mind.
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.
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.
Music became a healer for me.
The point of being at home is to be with my family as much as possible.
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.
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. 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.
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.
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 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.
Well, I think part of my gift, or if I have one, is that I love listening.
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.
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.
I like solitude. I like the anomalous life. I like a quiet life.
I don’t have half the nerves there that I have anywhere else.
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