That song has the full extent of my mandolin abilities; I'm not a good mandolin player at all.

There's just not a lot of guys around playing like that these days; a lot of steel players are plugging into stomp boxes, trying to sound like Jeff Beck on a steel guitar.

For years I walked around with the phrase "Green River" because I had seen that on a soda fountain drink when I was probably 8 or 9 years old, and I went, 'Gee, I like that.' Another one was "Lodi", which I thought sounded really cool. I got this cheap little empty plastic notebook at my local drugstore, and bought a little slab of filler paper and the very first title I wrote in it was "Proud Mary". I had no idea what that title meant.

You got to hidey-hide, you got to jump and run again. You got to hide-hidey-hide, the old man is down the road.

All the really great records or people who made them somehow came from Memphis or Louisiana or somewhere along the Mississippi River...And singers like Howlin' Wolf and Muddy Waters gave me the feeling that they were right there, standing by the river.

Long as I remember, rain been comin' down; Clouds of mystery fallin', confusion on the ground; Good men through the ages, trying to find the sun; And I wonder, still I wonder: Who will stop the rain?

Coonskin caps, Yankee bats, the Hound Dog man's big start. The A-bomb fears, Annette had ears, I lusted in my heart.