The Stones were nasty and ugly and doing songs I was familiar with.

Reading music is something that's inherently hateful to me. It makes music like mathematics.

By many peoples' standards, my playing is very primitive but by punk standards, I'm a virtuoso.

By then I was in Brooklyn and drank my way through that summer. I stopped when I got sick of that and got a job at the Strand bookstore, which was a little better than the tax job.

It was just like Howlin' Wolf. Once you arrive at the point that you understand it, the emotional factor is darker than some of the saddest blues stuff.

Meanwhile after failing the bar twice, I knew some people in New York and moved here in August '71.

My playing started to develop through the Miles Davis stuff I was listening to.