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.

After I exhausted the blues thing, I got into jazz.

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.

I was 12 in '55 when rock and roll hit. It just completely transformed me.

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

I never really followed grunge.

I started off with the really funky stuff like Ramsey Lewis, Milt Jackson, Kenny Burrell.