“If you don’t know the blues there’s no point in picking up the guitar and playing rock and roll or any other form of popular music.”

You get onstage and make other people feel happy. Make them feel good.

I’ve never had a problem with drugs. I’ve had problems with the police.

You can’t accuse me of anything I haven’t already confessed to.

Anything you throw yourself into, you better get yourself out of.

Whatever side I take, I know well that I will be blamed.

It’s great to be here. It’s great to be anywhere.

Songwriting’s a weird game.

If you’ve gotta think about being cool, you ain’t cool.

I’m free of hypochondria– although I’ve got everything else.

Everybody’s got a different way of telling a story – and has different stories to tell.

When I listen to what I did under the influence – 10 years of work – I don’t think it either enhanced or impaired me. It didn’t have that much to do with it.

I’ve never turned blue in someone else’s bathroom. I consider that the height of bad manners.

If you stay up, you get the songs that everyone else misses because they’re asleep.

I have no idea what the audience makes of me.

I mean some doctor told me I had six months to live and I went to their funeral.

But I’ve always felt very comfortable on stage, even if I screw up. It always felt like a dog, this is my turf, piss around it. While I’m here, nothing else can happen. All I can do is screw up. Otherwise, have a good time.

Your sound is in your hands as much as anything. It’s the way you pick, and the way you hold the guitar, more than it is the amp or the guitar you use.

The music of Hendrix wakes people up to their possibilities. It’s more than just dreaming about being a guitar hero.

I believe every guitar player inherently has something unique about their playing. They just have to identify what makes them different and develop it.

Didn’t want to be a star, wanted just to play guitar in this cockamamie business.

I thought Eric Clapton was good. He still is. Not only is he good – he’s rock’s #1 guitarist, and he plays blues better than most of us.

It doesn’t really matter what chords I play, what words I say or time of day it is, as it’s only a Northern Song.

Give me a guitar and I’ll play; give me a stage and I’ll perform; give me an auditorium and I’ll fill it.

The stainless-steel frets were a major breakthrough, because of the amount of playing and bending that I do. I have to get my guitars refretted every couple of months.