Hey, little dolly with the blue jeans on, I want to ramrod with you, honey, 'til half past dawn.

The only thing I can say about having this type of success is that you can get yourself in trouble because basically the world is set open for you. People will say yes to anything you ask, so it's basically down to you and what you want or need.

I was always concerned with writing to my age at a particular moment. That was the way I would keep faith with the audience that supported me as I went along.

At night I wake up with my sheets soaking wet and a freight train running through the middle of my head.

When I was very, very young, I decided that I was gonna catalogue my times because that's what other people who I admired did. That's what Bob Dylan did, that's what Frank Sinatra did, Hank Williams did, in very different ways.

When I first started in rock, I had a big guy's audience for my early records. I had a very straight image, particularly through the mid '80s.

I played in front of every conceivable audience you could face: an all-black audience, all-white, firemen's fairs, policemen's balls, in front of supermarkets, bar mitzvahs, weddings, drive-in theaters. I'd seen it all before I ever walked into a recording studio.