From '69 til '76, I never played in public. I would play by myself at home.

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

I think Blank Generation holds up pretty well. You listen to that with headphones and there's a lot going on there with the guitars- it's the product of a lot of fighting.

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

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.

Even by the time I was four or five, I had Gene Autry records.