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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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