We weren't like mates who decided to form a band. The other three met me because they were interested in being in the band that I was starting.

The music business - and I guess you could say any artistic endeavor - usually rewards those who are on the leading edge of where everything is going, but you can't be too far.

It's wonderful to read interviews by old blues guys - they talk about all their influences, they talk about who taught them how to play, and who they saw, and how they were determined to play that way.

I grew up in a house of no love or emotion - it kind of sticks with you.

It's what the mainstream does - they absorb things and they blunt the power of it. And so the next generation and the next generation has to become more shocking and more provocative in order to get any rise out of anybody.

That's the real endeavor: to try to create that direct conduit from the pure consciousness of your creative voice to the person who's a craftsman who can go into the world and consistently deliver new things worth paying attention to.

I put up with the music business because I understand that I'm in the tradition, I'm in a tradition that's of far greater importance than the business I seem to be in. Everywhere I go in the world, people ask me about the business that I seem to be in, but I'm not really in that business.