How many Beethovens are there that just for lack of the training, the world doesn't get exposed to.

I think The Grateful Dead kind of represents the spirit of being able to go out and have an adventure in America at large.

You have to be ready, and also you have to discard notions that are fondly held by a lot of musicians, about sequences and notes and about scales and musical systems as a whole. If you think of music as a language, the space part is where you throw out all the syntax.

You listen to a politician making a speech, and it is like hearing nothing. Whereas, music is unmistakably music. The thing about music is that nobody listens to it unless it's real. I don't think that you can fool anybody for too long in music. And you certainly can't fool everybody.

I sat down to my supper, twas a bottle of red whiskey.

Nobody stopped thinking about those psychedelic experiences. Once you've been to some of those places, you think, 'How can I get back there again but make it a little easier on myself?'

Listening. That's what music is about. You hear it. And I'd listen to it and something would move me one way or another; and I would try and play it.