The gateway to freedom...was somewhere close to New Orleans where most Africans were sorted through and sold. I had driven through New Orleans on tour and I'd been told my great grandfather had lived way back up in the woods among the evergreens in a log cabin. I revived the era with a song about a coloured boy named Johnny B. Goode. My first thought was to make his life follow as my own had come along, but I thought it would seem biased to white fans to say 'coloured boy' and changed it to 'country boy'.

Of the five most important things in life, health is first, education or knowledge is second, and wealth is third. I forget the other two.

You don't just go to the studio and say, 'I'm going to write a hit.' It becomes a hit when people like your compositions.

Up come a flat top, he was movin' up with me.

I have so many entities now as grow older you gain responsibilities, you know, real estate, and I like video, and you know I want to live a little you know, because time is passing, its not as long as it has been.

Rock is rock, and, rock and roll, rock is just short for rock and roll.

I would sing the blues if I had the blues.