And then I think we realized, like any young guys, that blues are not learned in a monastery. You've got to go out there and get your heart broke and then come back and then you can sing the blues.

I never plan anything, which is probably the difference between Mick and myself. Mick needs to know what he's gonna do tomorrow and I'm just happy to wake up to see who's hanging around. Mick's rock and I'm roll.

One guy can ruin an instrument. Jimi Hendrix, bless his heart - how I wish he was still around - almost inadvertently ruined guitar. Because he was the only cat who could do it like that. Everybody else just screwed it up, and thought wailing away (on the guitar) is the answer. But it ain't; you've got to be a Jimi to do that, you've got to be one of the special cats.

What is it that makes you want to write songs? In a way you want to stretch yourself into other people’s hearts. You want to plant yourself there, or at least get a resonance, where other people become a bigger instrument than the one you’re playing. It becomes almost an obsession to touch other people. To write a song that is remembered and taken to heart is a connection, a touching of bases. A thread that runs through all of us. A stab to the heart. Sometimes I think songwriting is about tightening the heartstrings as much as possible without bringing on a heart attack.

Songwriting's a weird game.

But I'm not here just to make records and money. I'm here to say something and to touch other people, sometimes in a cry of desperation: "Do you know this feeling?

If you say I'm great, thank you very much. But I know what I am. I could be better, man, you know?