“That’s how it happens, livin life by the drop.”

I mainly use Stratocasters. I like a lot of different kinds of guitars, but for what I do, it seems that a Stratocaster is the most versatile. I can pretty much get any sound out of it, and I use stock pickups.

My baby she’s a long and lean, you mess with her you see a man get mean.

Jazz changes and all. But I don’t know the names of what it is I’m doing.

I play as many different things – piano, sax and harp parts – as I can at once. Whatever I can fit, whenever I need to.

But between sets I’d sneak over to the black places to hear blues musicians. It got to the point where I was making my living at white clubs and having my fun at the other places.

I love my baby like the finest wine, I’ll stick with her until the end of time.

The way I play, I go through a set in a year. So I put ’58 Gibson Jumbo Bass frets on all my necks.

You know, there’s a big lie in this business. The lie is that it’s okay to go out in flames. But that doesn’t do anybody much good. I may be wrong, but I think Hendrix was trying to come around.

So, my big brother was playing guitar and I figured I’d try it too.

You see, we are here, as far as I can tell, to help each other – our brothers, our sisters, our friends, our enemies. That’s to help each other, not hurt each other.

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.

I hit rock bottom, but thank God my bottom wasn’t death.

Music really is a way to reach out and hold on to each other in a healthy way.

I’ve put my life back together, but it’s all a growing process and that’s neat, too, because if you stop growing, what good is it musically? So that is what I am looking forward to – growing. In some ways, I felt stagnant in my life and it showed.

Even though there’s reasons to try things that may or may not work, it’s still a real intimate way to finish the song with everybody right there in the band just locked in.

I actually wanted to be a drummer, but I didn’t have any drums.

The most mighty of nature’s laws is this, that out of Death she brings Life.

Better be an old maid, a woman with herself as a husband, than the wife of a fool; and Solomon more than hints that all men are fools; and every wise man knows himself to be one.

Once in one’s life, for one mortal moment, one must make a grab for immortality; if not, one has not lived.

I always wanted to live a man’s life in a woman’s body.

Old age is always wakeful; as if, the longer linked with life, the less man has to do with aught that looks like death.

It took me a long time and much painful boomeranging of my expectations to achieve a realization everyone else appears to have been born with: That I am nobody but myself.

Whatever my fate, I’ll go to it laughing.

Weep not for me. Rather let your tears flow for the sorrows of the multitude. My work is done. Like a ripe fruit I admit the gathering. Death has no terrors for it is a wise law of nature. I am ready whenever the summons may come.