I never really had stage nerves but I did have had trouble getting up to the right energy level. For a long time I drank. I drank up until 1982 and then I gave up alcohol.

If I could read your mind, what a tale your thoughts could tell. Just like a paperback novel, the kind that drugstores sell.

I went on tours with [Bob] Dylan - the big one was in 1975 and called Roaring Thunder Review. I knew him well because I met him around the time he did his second album, in 1963. He recorded one of my songs called Shadows. In the 1970s, it was suggested that we do a duet, because we had the same manager, Albert Grossman, who also managed Odetta and Peter, Paul and Mary. Dylan and I respected what each other did, but I just decided not to do it.

Be calm in the face of all common disgraces.

All that remains is the faces and the names of the wives and the sons and the daughters.

I was in Britain that year [1963] and some music publishing people in Denmark Street in London suggested me to the BBC. So I found myself in front of a British television show, which was a nice surprise.

I never really had stage nerves but I did have had trouble getting up to the right energy level. For a long time I drank. I drank up until 1982 and then I gave up alcohol.