The way I was singing the songs was jazz

Any artist is an instrument-and that's exactly why you can't do it all the time. You can only do it when it's happening, when it's coming through. No matter how much you may want to do it, if it's not happening then it's simply not happening.

If you live the life you love, you get the blessing from above.

We're [with Robbie Robertson ] jazz musicians. The context may be rock 'n' roll but it's still jazz. It's jazz and that means improvization...you play a tune the way it feels and you play it differently every time. It can never be the same.

I'd come to the point where I wasn't really putting out creatively. I didn't seem to have anything to say in that period of time after the '74 tour. There was nothing definite that I wanted to record.

You have to understand a bit about the poetry of the blues to know where the references are coming from.

And I want to rock your gypsy soul Just like way back in the days of old And magnificently we will fold into the mystic