I tried when I was 13, when my grandparents gave me an acoustic guitar, and I tried for a year. It hurt so much to play. I mean, the fingertips hurt so much, I gave up.

I have always been resistant to doctrine, and any spirituality I had experienced thus far in my life had been much more abstract and not aligned with any recognized religion. For me, the most trustworthy vehicle for spirituality had always proven to be music. It cannot be manipulated, or politicized, and when it is, that becomes immediately obvious.

I just like the company of beautiful women. I have a weakness in that department. And I suppose because I am fairly well off and a famous musician, I'm up for grabs. And that makes me an eligible bachelor in the press.

I often enjoy singing in an acoustic setting more than an amplified one.

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.

Although they can do it all the time, you know, they're far better than me, on a musically, on a theoretical music level. You know, they're out of my league.

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.