Africa has been troubled for a long time - well, the world has been troubled ever since I was born.

I don't think any musician ever thinks about making a statement. I think everybody goes into music loving it.

When I left South Africa in 1960 I was 20 years old. I wanted to try to get an education, and music education was not available for me in South Africa.

I always make the joke that I go home, to one of my homes, to go and do laundry so I can go on the road again.

To tell you the truth, man, we spend most of the time travelling in hotels, in festivals, in concert halls, clubs, airports. The most unenjoyable part is all the security at airports.

I just came from South Africa, a place that had been in a perpetual uprising since 1653, so the uprising had become a way of life in our culture and we grew up with rallies and strikes and marches and boycotts.

I had to run away from home in order to be a musician. Because I came from a family of... my father was a health inspector; my mother was a social worker. And I was pretty smart in school. So they expected me to be some kind of academic - schoolteacher, or doctor, lawyer - and they were very disappointed when I told them I wanted to be a musician.