“What Muddy Waters did for us is what we should do for others. It’s the old thing, what you want written on your tombstone as a musician: ‘He passed it on.’”

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.

Some things get better with age. Like me.

To a musician or songwriter, your canvas is silence.

One of the great things about songwrighting; it’s not an intellectual experience.

I only get ill when I give up drugs. I don’t have a drug problem, I have a police problem.

We age not by holding on to youth, but by letting ourselves grow and embracing whatever youthful parts remain.

I’m an ‘evolve or die’ kind of a musician. I think it’s cool to try new things.

For some musicians it becomes self-reflexive to think, “I have to write some of my kind of songs now.”

I was a fairly good amateur musician, and I was an average professional. But the one thing I saw was that the big band business was fading.

It is really beautiful, and musical in its poetry.

Not only are they just great, nice guys; they’re some of the best musicians you’re likely to find.

The people who vote for the Grammy nominees are mostly in their 40s and have other jobs or are musicians themselves. They like music that they can relate to – they like commercial music.

The wise musicians are those who play what they can master.

If you have a great band with a mediocre drummer, you have a mediocre band. If you have a mediocre band with a great drummer, you have a great band!