Everything I wrote about wasn't about me, but about the people listening.

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

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'.

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.

Praise doesn't mean anything to me. I don't judge myself.

You know, your ears record. You might can sing a song once you hear it.