I think the women - Lauryn Hill, Mary J. Blige, Erykah Badu - are doing new conceptual things and using their voices to create new American music.

As a guitar player, you can gravitate to the blues because you can play it easily. It's not a style that's difficult to pick up. It's purely emotive and dead easy to get a start with.

I felt that, in retrospect, there was a time in the late Seventies, after I had a string of hits and successes, as a performer and a recording artist, that I wasn't saying anything.

I think that it can be said of a lot of artists, and myself included, that we made the same record over and over from the beginning.

My earliest influences were things I heard in my household.

I am not a jazz singer. I wouldn't place myself on that footing. I wouldn't even enter that arena.

I love working with the quartet. I have more freedom and flexibility.