Almost the moment he died, they put him in Playboy as one of the greatest drummers, which he was – there’s no doubt about it. There’s never been anybody since. He’s one of the greatest drummers that ever lived.
So far I’ve been very, very fortunate because it appears that people like to hear the music I like to play. What more fortunate position can a musician be in?
You can’t overthink the music. Mood and intensity can’t be manufactured. The blues isn’t about structure; it’s what you bring to it. The spontaneity of capturing a specific moment is what drives it.
There’s music that can affect people in their lives, and they will always relate to the point that they heard it and experienced it, either if you’re playing it or you’re receptive, as an audience.
The blues appealed to me, but so did rock. The early rockabilly guitarists like Cliff Gallup and Scotty Moore were just as important to me as the blues guitarists.
Once I got a guitar that was relatively user-friendly, but not super-duper easy, I really came on as a guitarist, at that point. It helped. It was a super-expensive guitar either, but something needs to steer you a bit, if you’re playing an instrument that is really hard.
I played guitar all my life, all the way through the Yardbirds, but I knew that for me this was going to be a guitar vehicle, because that’s what I wanted it to be.
