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'.

I grew up thinking art was pictures until I got into music and found I was an artist and didn't paint.

Music is music; you can't change rock and say well this is punk rock and this is acid rock or rockabilly.

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.

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.

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

Music is music and I think music people are the delivers, the actors, when they put their music out they want to insert their character in it. So they call it such and such so you know how they live so to speak.