“He saw us play a few times in fact. I did this song called I Can't Keep From Crying Sometimes, and Jimi loved it. He paid me a huge compliment when he told me that he was thinking of doing something similar himself!”
“Strangely enough, through all those school years I decided at 13 or 14 I was going to be a musician and so school was just something to get out of the way, a waste of time and not to bother with it.”
“There is a big age gap between my sisters Janice and Irma and myself so I didn't know them that well when I was younger although they have been very supportive in later life.”
“They have decided to tour under the name of Ten Years After which I don't think is very cool. To be honest, they have had to do that as it's the only way they can get any work.”
“We used to play the underground clubs like the UFO, and Middle Earth, and they were great because they would have on things like a poet, string quartets, and then a rock band! It was kinda cool!”
“I strongly encourage listening to the radio to hear something you haven't heard before. It's a very healthy thing to do. It's strange: unless you reload your iPods every couple of weeks, you're listening to and recycling the same music all of the time. I'm serious. Listen to your radio station.”
“It wasn't very satisfying playing the big arenas, but it was good as far as a paycheck. But the sound was terrible, especially in hockey arenas - the sound would go on for 30 seconds after we quit playing.”
“Musical freedom has always been very strong for me, something to strive for, to be able to play the music you enjoy playing rather than playing music that other people want to hear, which I find rather shallow and unrewarding. So I make albums I like, and I put them out and hope other people like them, and that's a kind of freedom in itself.”
“My father was always playing this ethnic blues stuff around the house, and both my parents played. Then one day my father brought home Big Bill Broonzy, and there he was sitting in our living room playing, and blues was in my heart from the time I was 12 years old.”
“My favorite country blues player was Big Bill Broonzy. City blues was Freddie King, but I liked them all - Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker, Ralph Willis, Lonnie Johnson, Brownie McGhee and the three Kings, B.B., Albert and Freddie. Jazz-wise, I listened to Django, Barney Kessel and Wes Montgomery.”