Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Music became a healer for me.
Plant your love and let it grow.
I am, and always will be, a blues guitarist.
An obsession is where something will not leave your mind.
Risk is trying to control something you are powerless over.
I don't have half the nerves there that I have anywhere else.
I don't know if I believe in luck. I think I'm very fortunate.
I like solitude. I like the anomalous life. I like a quiet life.
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.
I often enjoy singing in an acoustic setting more than an amplified one.
The first band I identified with from Chicago was the Muddy Waters band.
You can't mastermind everything. You'll go crazy. Just show up and play.
There's a desire in me to express something - to match what I hear in my head.
When I'm wrong it's never meant for you, so don't confuse my love with what I do.
One of the most beneficial things I've ever learned is how to keep my mouth shut.
I just like the company of beautiful women. I have a weakness in that department.
The toughest thing about being a celebrity, I suppose, is being polite when I don't want to be.
I'd love to knock an audience cold with one note, but what do you do for the rest of the evening?
I wish I could write easily. I'm one of those guys who's visited by the muse when things are dire.
The blues are what I've turned to, what has given me inspiration and relief in all the trials of my life.
Given the choice between accomplishing something and just lying around, I'd rather lie around. No contest.
In playing, I suppose my greatest gift was to express the way I felt or the willingness to express myself.
It is painful to relive things that have caused emotional crises or whatever and find ways to express that musically.
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 feel wonderful because I see the love light in your eyes, and the wonder of it all is you just don't realize how much I love you.
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.
'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.
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 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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.