I've always been suspicious of TV, I've always found music and video to be an unhappy marriage.

When I started, all I wanted to do was play like Chuck (Berry)

The electric guitar meant that you could have a band with a drummer and a couple of guitars. And that put a lot of horn players out of work.

True friends. Hardest thing to find, but you never look for them - they found you ; you just grow into each other

The thing about being a songwriter, once you realize you are one, is that to provide ammo, you start to become an observer. ... You're constantly on the alert. That faculty gets trained in you over the years: observing people, how they react to one another, which in a way makes you weirdly distant. ... It's a little of Peeping Tom, being a song-writer.

What interested me about Chuck Berry was the way he could step out of the rhythm part with such ease, throwing in a nice, simple riff, and then drop straight into the feel of it again. We used to play a lot more rhythm stuff. We'd do away with the differences between lead and rhythm guitar. You can't go into a shop and ask for a "lead guitar". You're a guitar player, and you play a guitar.

I haven't stopped smoking...anything