James Brown's Live at the Apollo is not just a musical whiplash, it's a spiritual cleansing. You can just close your eyes and see him doing the splits, kicking the mic stand and doing a 360.

Those original, black, spirited, defiant, rebellious musical masters. Chuck Berry was one of the first masters of Les Paul's new electric guitar; he pretty much laid down the gauntlet, and I don't think anybody's ever beat him since. Way before the British Invasion, I was tuned into the black guys that created the British Invasion. Without Howlin' Wolf, Muddy Waters, Robert Johnson, Lightnin' Hopkins, Bo Diddley, Chuck Berry and the Motown hits, there would be no Beatles.

The best musicians in the world were raised on the same kind of music I was raised on and that is black, soulful, authoritative, ultra-tight, ferocious, uppity, defiant music that from the Howlin' Wolf, the Muddy Waters, the Lightnin' Hopkins, the Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, and Little Richard.

I started singing with the Amboy Dukes in '87. I sang 'Oh Baby Please Don't Go,' the old Van Morrison song by Joey Smith. I started singing more from then on.

Isn't my music the last of the real rhythm and blues? Isn't it great? It's because of my musicians, we were weaned on Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, Bo Diddley, Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis, all the founding fathers, the gods of thunder, who invented the foundation and the pulse of the greatest music in the world!

I clearly understood the concept of wise use before I ever heard the actual words, for my father wouldn't allow us to waste anything.

Only thing worse than a Frenchman is a Frenchman who lives in Canada