I thought, 'My God, this is like Buddy Guy on acid.'

Like a fool, I fell in love with you, Turned my whole world upside down

I always respected that B.B. sees music in a very open, free way.

But I did go to music really early on, even when I was 4 or 5, I was responding to music probably in ways other kids were not.

It's very difficult to explain the effect the first blues record I heard had on me, except to say that I recognized it immediately. It was as if I were being reintroduced to something that I already knew, maybe from another, earlier life. For me there is something primitively soothing about this music, and it went straight to my nervous system, making me feel ten feet tall.

When all the original blues guys are gone, you start to realize that someone has to tend to the tradition. I recognize that I have some responsibility to keep the music alive, and it's a pretty honorable position to be in.

They looked great, you know the drawings of the guys playing looked great and bits of string around their necks. So it didn't seem to be that difficult a thing to do, or that inaccessible.