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

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.

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 whole deal is when you walk onstage, you’re up there bigger than life. People idolize you.

You know, right now, the most important thing in my life is to make sure you understand that, first of all, I thank God I’m alive today, and I mean that. You see, I spent too many years of my life thinking that the big party was the whole thing.

The circle of an empty day is brutal and at night it tightens around your neck like a noose

He nuzzles my neck affectionately. “i love you. I’m happier right now than i ever remember being.

We do not seek to hurt any man, but if any man seeks to hurt us may he break his neck.

Like his master he is never showy. He does not paw and prance, and arch his neck, and bid the world admire his beauties…and when he is wanted, he can always do his work.

A Labour minister gets it in the neck if he looks at his neighbour’s wife over the garden fence.

People say that if you find water rising up to your ankle, that’s the time to do something about it, not when it’s around your neck.

Most birds are very stiff-necked, like the robin, and as they run or hop upon the ground, carry the head as if it were riveted to the body.

When my ancestors came from Africa, they were shackled by our neck, our wrists, and our ankles in steel chains.