“Jeff Lynne is an arranger, and I think it’s probably much easier for him to go ahead and play a part himself than to try to show somebody else what he wants. But it’s hard for me to say; I barely know Jeff.”

Fortunately, as we all know, it’s impossible for anybody but Jimmy Smith to really sound like Jimmy Smith.

I think we’ve always been better live.

Sometimes you work with somebody you’ve never heard of because you just feel like working.

I think I drift toward sad love songs.

I’m playing 10 feet from Mike Campbell every night. I look across the stage, there’s Howie. Tom’s in the middle and we’re playing all this stuff I love. It’s great.

If you call attention to yourself at the expense of the song, that’s the cardinal sin.

We started with Denny Cordell, and he was a great record producer. He knew exactly how to take a band that knew absolutely nothing, and guide you without trying to tell you what to do.

I got to play on a couple of records with the Rolling Stones, and that was really special to me.

Working with Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson takes you up another level.

I try to find little things that you can do to move the song along and things that serve the song.

You can go crazy and play solos in the right place, and that’s great because it can intensify and bring an emotional lift. But the thing is you don’t want to get in the way of the song.

I loved working with Bob Dylan.

I never looked at hockey as work. Now that I’d finished playing, I had to go to work.

I just start playing music and eventually I sing something, a line of a verse or a B section or a line of a chorus, and the line that I end up singing is related to the music I’m playing, if that makes any sense. And I go from there.

I was so happy and content with in life playing music. Music was always my first job and my day gig was my second job.

I had been playing with my local band, Skinny Cat. I had been to quite a few auditions before UFO, managed to get the gig and then not want to do it!

After all, the average playing life of a pro football player is about eight years and it is only fitting that the veterans get something for their efforts.

I’m uptight in general, and it’s hard for me to play in a situation where I’m not rehearsed or I feel like I’m not prepared. So it’s always hard for me to come away from those and think it was the best thing I could do.

After the band loaded in and the curtain opened, we realized there was exactly one paying customer in the audience.

The only pictures worth making are the ones that are playing with fire.