I think everybody has their own way of looking at their lives as some kind of pilgrimage. Some people will see their role as a pilgrim in terms of setting up a fine family, or establishing a business inheritance. Everyone's got their own definition.
Eric Clapton
An obsession is where something will not leave your mind.
Music became a healer for me. And I learned to listen with all my being. I found that it could wipe away all the emotions of fear and confusion relating to my family.
One of the most beneficial things I've ever learned is how to keep my mouth shut.
'My Father's Eyes' is very personal. I realized that the closest I ever came to looking in my father's eyes was when I looked into my son's eyes.
I like solitude. I like the anomalous life. I like a quiet life.
I just like the company of beautiful women. I have a weakness in that department. And I suppose because I am fairly well off and a famous musician, I'm up for grabs. And that makes me an eligible bachelor in the press.
Very much like that, and very much a loner, do you know and I didn't fit really into sport or all kind of group activities as a kid, I couldn't find a niche. And music was not really part of the kind of village curriculum it would, you know.
I used to do crazy things that people would bail me out of, and I'm just grateful that I survived. But the music got very lost; I didn't know where I was going, and I didn't really care. I was more into just having a good time, and I think it showed.
The blues are what I've turned to, what has given me inspiration and relief in all the trials of my life.
I never met Johnny Rotten, and I didn't want to meet Johnny Rotten.
This moment in time, on this tour, you know, I'm discovering a lot of new things. And to be 45 and doing that, it's a mixture of pleasure and pain, I can assure you.
I'd love to knock an audience cold with one note, but what do you do for the rest of the evening?
One summer I remember, I got exposed to Chuck Berry and Buddy Holly and Buddy Holly was a very very big, made a very big impression on me. Because of a lot of things, you know, the way he looked and his charisma.
I mean, it didn't matter to me that there were people, it didn't matter that I was shy Just the sound was so captivating that it helped me to get rid of those inhibitions.
But the guitar, when you think about it, is the most versatile, really. I mean you can pick it up and take it with you wherever you go.
When all the original blues guys are gone, you start to realize that someone has to tend to the tradition. I recognize that I have some responsibility to keep the music alive, and it's a pretty honorable position to be in.
Well, I think part of my gift, or if I have one, is that I love listening.
In playing, I suppose my greatest gift was to express the way I felt or the willingness to express myself.
Given the choice between accomplishing something and just lying around, I'd rather lie around. No contest.
I just like the company of beautiful women. I have a weakness in that department.
I don't know if I believe in luck. I think I'm very fortunate.
Risk is trying to control something you are powerless over.
I feel a real need to observe a level of propriety in what I'm handing out. Instead of me just venting or spilling my guts, I've got to consider how it's going to affect people. How it's going to affect me, as well. Because it's like a cycle.
Music became a healer for me.
My original interests and intentions in guitar playing were primarily created on quality of tone, for instance, the way the instrument could be made to echo or simulate the human voice.
Oh yeah, I mean, it wasn't a very good guitar, most good guitars have got thrust rods in the necks that you can adjust or that'll keep them in shape, you know keep them straight. This one just, well it turned into a bow and arrow after a couple of months.
I wish I could write easily. I'm one of those guys who's visited by the muse when things are dire.
I sought my father in the world of the black musician, because it contained wisdom, experience, sadness and loneliness. I was not ever interested in the music of boys. From my youngest years, I was interested in the music of men.
The first guitar I ever had was a gut-string Spanish guitar, and I couldn't really get the hang of it. I was only 13, and I talked my grandparents into buying it for me. I tried and tried and tried, but got nowhere with it.
I'm not a big fan of lead vocalists, people who sing but don't play. I never wanted to be in a band where the guy who was up front just sang. I've always thought it better when one of the musicians sings, like Steve Winwood.
It was stumbling on to really the bible of the blues, you know, and a very powerful drug to be introduced to us and I absorbed it totally, and it changed my complete outlook on music.
It's taken me to be an older guy, an old man, to have an old man's voice. Because I only liked old men's voices. As a kid, I didn't like pip-squeaked singers.
It is painful to relive things that have caused emotional crises or whatever and find ways to express that musically.
I think everybody has their own way of looking at their lives as some kind of pilgrimage. Some people will see their role as a pilgrim in terms of setting up a fine family, or establishing a business inheritance. Everyone's got their own definition. Mine, I suppose, is to know myself.
I often enjoy singing in an acoustic setting more than an amplified one.
It was a mystery to me, how the tuning was, or the style seemed to come out of nowhere, it obviously had roots in America going way back, there was nothing like it for me I'd ever seen before.
When you're onstage with an electric band going through a massive P.A. system, it's very artificial. You can't really hear your own voice as it comes out of your mouth.
Yeah, I wanted to know where they got it from, what it was all about, you know, and it seemed to strike something in me that was you know rearing it's head and I still don't know what that is.
Yeah, and I went straight into a fantasy world. Just stepped straight into the abyss. You know, I was gone and kids used to walk past my front room, cause I lived on the green.
The point of being at home is to be with my family as much as possible.
I don't have half the nerves there that I have anywhere else.
I tried when I was 13, when my grandparents gave me an acoustic guitar, and I tried for a year. It hurt so much to play. I mean, the fingertips hurt so much, I gave up.
I remember hearing Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee, Big Bill Broonzy, Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley and not really knowing anything about the geography or the culture of the music. But for some reason it did something to me - it resonated.
The first one was quite cheap, but that was expensive for us. For my folks to buy on the Never Never. It was quite, you know, a rare object to have and I gained quite a lot of status by having this.
There's a desire in me to express something - to match what I hear in my head.
I just managed to convince my grandmother that it was a worth while that was something to do, you know, and when I did finally get the guitar, it didn't seem that difficult to me, to be able to make a good noise out of it.
They looked great, you know the drawings of the guys playing looked great and bits of string around their necks. So it didn't seem to be that difficult a thing to do, or that inaccessible.
Leave bands, go back to obscurity if I choose to, without a great sense of loss of security because it's all been based on the fact that I did it on my own or was doing, enjoying doing it on my own in the first place.
I mean, the sound of an amplified guitar in a room full of people was so hypnotic and addictive to me, that I could cross any kind of border to get on there.
