There's always stress involved in any genre or art form, there's always going to be a struggle. If there's no struggle, you wouldn't do anything. What are you going do? Retire?

Basically I got an insight into what it really was through Alcoholics Anonymous. One day the switchboard lit up and I saw where it was all going. I saw what alcohol could do to people and I saw that it wasn't a good thing anymore. Plus I wasn't a teenager anymore myself.

I educated myself. To me, school was boring.

Sartre said that hell is other people, I believe that most of them are

You learn to read the audiences after a while, and there are all different kinds of gigs.

You gotta fight every day to keep mediocrity at bay.

I learnt from Armstrong on the early recordings that you never sang a song the same way twice.