I try to beat back the producers and engineers so they - there's not an excess of stuff used to squeeze my voice to make it artificial. There's a person in there, and people will listen; if they hear another person speak to them, they'll listen because it's lonely out here.

I've probably been spit on more that any person alive outside of, I would say, a member of the prison system.

Living in England was wonderfully civil and easy-going.

I thought, "Wow, it sounds really stoned anyway." It sounded good to me. I found out that there was a lot in there. What all this comes down to is I was just trying to get in touch with myself. And I met some interesting people in New York who weren't in show business. I even got to know my dentist.

Stages are getting higher and higher, and I'm getting older and older.

I smoked this joint and then it hit me. I thought, what you gotta do is play your own simply blues.

I was feeling that I was the in the dead-end circuit from 1980 to 1983, and I didn't know what else to do. I remember doing a show in some college town, in a tiny club, and afterward some fans came back. I thought I had done good gig and they were going to tell me that.