Music is life, and life is not a business.

The people who were learning from me tended to be more commercial performers who were gonna rip off the salient idea to do it in a way that will sell, but they weren't going for the music.

I find it hard to focus looking forward. So I look backward.

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

When it comes to art, money is an unimportant detail. It just happens to be a huge unimportant detail.

The problem being: for years I was struggling - first to prove that I had any talent, then to create some skills and finally to fulfil it reasonably. But then once I got there it was, "OK. I did that, but I want to be happy." And that's a whole different deal. It's kind of like a dance. Being active seems to help. I'm 70, so sometimes a little voice is going, "Just take it easy".

Well, it wasn't like I was going to run out and score heroin and score an ounce of coke - but incidentally, on the road, I would usually get tanked up and as stoned as I possibly could to go on stage. And offstage, it would be a demon that would come up about twice a week.