“To make a rock’n’roll record, technology is the least important thing.”

But I’m not here just to make records and money. I’m here to say something and to touch other people, sometimes in a cry of desperation: “Do you know this feeling?

I personally believe that most people that play an instrument would be able to write a few songs here and there. But they say, “I tried, I can’t do it” and give up and don’t try it again; they get too discouraged.

Fame has killed more very talented guys than drugs. Jimi Hendrix didn’t die of an overdose, he died of fame.

[John] Belushi was an extreme experience even by my standards.

You see, to me, the art of music is listening to it, not playing it. The real art of it is hearing it.

This is the rock ‘n’ roll life, and you had to invent it as you went along. There was no textbook to say how you operate this machinery.

Nobody wants to get old, but nobody wants to die young either.

I looked upon myself, in a sort of romantic and silly way, as like a laboratory.

It’s an addiction and addiction is something I should know something about.

You’ve got the sun, you’ve got the moon, and you’ve got the Rolling Stones.

If you say I’m great, thank you very much. But I know what I am. I could be better, man, you know?

Yes, I’ve been trepanned. That’s quite an interesting experience, especially for my brain surgeon, who saw my thoughts flying around in my brain.

You know, the BBC had not been particularly generous in its deliverance of blues and esoteric kinds of music.

Some people think I’m a mythical genius, others think I’m a junkie madman.

The idea of retiring is like killing yourself. It’s almost like Hari Kari. I intend to live to a 100 and go down in history.

I don’t encourage anybody to do what I do, you know? Why should you? More for me!

I try not to record them on my Dictaphone when I first hear them. If I forget all about it and it pops up later on, then I know it’s good enough. I let my subconscious do the editing for me.

I didn’t want to be a big record mogul and all that stuff. I just wanted to write songs and make people laugh.

And then all of a sudden that starts disappearing from the book, and just about everything I’m talking about from that point on are the records that I’m totally involved in.

What else but our own sturdy reliance on freedom can explain the unexampled record this country has made?

There was a refinement about his playing. You know, in those days I played a little trumpet, and I could play all the solos from his records, by heart.

I feel like on those older records there are a lot of attempts at clever turns of phrase.

We wanted to be like R.E.M., but the reality is that 15 years after R.E.M. was putting out those records, the playing field had changed drastically as well.

One of the hardest things in the world is to perform on record and get someone to enjoy and feel what you’re doing. It’s unlike, like TV you can, you can fake it with the face and the crying and the bits. Recording is completely different.