In New York, if you go into an Italian-American neighbourhood, the code of the streets is respect and reputation.
Dion DiMucci
I got one of the best sax players in the business - Arno Hecht. He plays with the Uptown Horns and all the great blues bands. He expresses the heart of the Apollo Theatre, let me tell you.
Life is full of awe and grace and truth, mystery and wonder. I live in that atmosphere.
With Del Shannon - and I've got to tell you this - there's nobody probably on the face of the earth that I identified more with musically. We used to sit and sing George Jones and Hank Williams tunes.
It's hard to explain music when it goes in your gut and makes left and right and turns and moves you and resonates with you.
A lot of my friends, they think I grew up to rock and roll, but I didn't. I grew up to Hank Williams, Jimmy Reid, Howlin' Wolf, listening to a race record, blues.
When I didn't do 'Runaround Sue' on the 'Ed Sullivan Show,' for example, I didn't listen to my inner voice. I should have.
While Paul Simon is revered, I don't think people get how deep he is. I love the guy. He comes from that early street-harmony, first-generation type of rock and rollers. He gets it.
I tell you, gospel music is very uplifting. It's great. It's just a lot of fun to write, and it's wonderful for the heart, soul, mind, and spirit. It's just great.
For me, God's country is sirens and subways and all kinds of ethnic groups trying to cross the street all at once.
The form of the blues helps us express our joys, our fears, our - anything you want to express. And it helps you get it out instead of it spiraling inward, and you're getting twisted up and exploding. So it's a bit of salvation.
I come from this macho Italian neighborhood. When I was thirteen, during those real vulnerable, impressionable years, and a boy starts becoming a man, to make that transition, and you start making decisions, and you start developing virtue and principles - I never made the transition.
It was a lot of fun in the back of that bus with Ritchie Valens, Buddy and The Big Bopper sharing each other's songs.
My first tour, for six weeks straight, was with Bobby Darin, in 1958. It was just fun hanging out with him. He was older than I was; he was a college guy. It was kind of a mutual-admiration society, I guess. He taught me how to pay taxes.
I left Columbia in the mid-'60s. I had a guaranteed contract for, like, $100,000 a year. And I just let it go. And I wasn't a rich man. There were a lot of bad vibes around the whole thing.
People were watching the TV set, and they said three rock-and-rollers died - Buddy Holly, Richie Valens, The Big Bopper, including the pilot. I walked out of the hotel. I got on the bus alone. Their clothes were hanging on the racks, their guitars on the seats.
I serve up the hits, and I enjoy doing it.
I want to rock till I drop. I love rock and roll music. It keeps you young.
I moved my family down to Miami to stay with my father-in-law, Jack, for a while. Best move I ever made.
That is amazing that a guy like St. Jerome who lived in the fourth century could bring people together. Sometimes you think people are dead and forgotten. But they can actually bring you together in the best way.
The day I heard Hank Williams for the first time, my life changed.
If I could sing and play like Lightnin' Hopkins, I would.
If you make excuses, you're going to believe in a lie. And I don't believe in that lie that you can't make it, that somebody is trying to hold you back.
Be authentic, true to yourself, genuine. Question what you really love along the way. There are so many voices out there. And you can lose yourself.
I don't believe in being a victim. I think with information and motivation, you can do anything.
If you don't have God in your life, you have to fill up on something. And you usually reach for the four great substitutes, the classical addictions: wealth, pleasure, power, and honor. So you try to fill yourself up.
There were a lot of bad relationships that got very convoluted up at Columbia with me, what they expected from me.
I thought you had to be humble to become a saint, but a priest told me it takes all kinds to make it to heaven.
Hank Williams seemed, like, so total to me, so committed to the lyric. He would actually rip the ends of the words off at the, you know - the end of the sentence. It sounded like he'd bite into the word and rip it off.
My definition of the blues is the naked cry of the human heart longing to be in union with God.
I never got into this business to do interviews. It was always about the music.
I know they call it the British Invasion, but musically, I call it the British Infusion.
I was playing with Chuck Berry, who sounded like an English teacher. Did you ever listen to his records? He pronounces every word.
I couldn't sing like Mick Jagger, not that I wanted to.
I heard Robert Johnson way before I heard about Eric Clapton.
You constantly have to take inventory, not get on someone else's agenda. You want to write something that's poignant and moves people.
I was a weird kid. I loved music, and I loved reading about God.
Early on, I tried to sing, but sustaining a note was something I wasn't comfortable with. So I tried to get off of the note as soon as I could.
The point here is that I enjoyed singing. I enjoyed the rhythm of it. I grew up listening to Louis Prima, who was also rhythmic.
By the age of 15, I knew over 40 Hank Williams songs.
Songs, to me, have always been kind of like a diary, you know - and, say, when I did 'Teenager In Love,' maybe I was 16.
I grew up with my parents screaming and yelling at each other for the rent in Bronx, New York City at the time. It was $36. So my mind hadn't stretched out to that place where I could spend a whole month's rent on a 45-minute plane flight to Fargo, N.D.
I've got these die-hard fans on Facebook, and you'd swear they haven't heard anything I've done since 1962, 1963.
I don't sing white; I don't sing black - I sing Bronx. When I sing 'Ruby Baby,' I'm rolling like Jimmy Reed. I wanted to communicate like Hank Williams and groove like Jimmy Reed.
I feel really relevant and creative, and I don't think I would've made an album if I didn't feel relevant. I wouldn't have said a word.
I got a little advice for everybody: marry the girl who's going to get you to heaven.
I have a great band from Jersey and New York. I say that because they got great attitude, and we have a great time on stage.
I just love to do the songs, and that's what I'm still about - taking people on a trip. A good trip.
Music is an expression. It's almost like a diary in my life, you know. You express your perceptions and your view on life - your world view.
There's a lot of unreleased blues stuff I did with the Apollo Theater musicians, and there was of experimenting going on for me in the mid-'60s in that studio, which I think frustrated Columbia.
