I just like being a social experiment sometimes. I really should not be allowed in public. But I just go out into the public just to see people's reaction.
Some of my ancestors were religious dissenters who came to America over three hundred years ago. Others were abolitionists in New England in the eighteen forties and fifties.
I decline to discuss, under compulsion, where I have sung, and who has sung my songs, and who else has sung with me, and the people I have known.
I've found that festivals are a relatively painless way to meet people and make a few points that need making, without having to hit them over the head with too many speeches.
I've always had self-belief, though my sensitive side has never been fully appreciated. For every 'Down in the Tube Station at Midnight,' I've written an 'English Rose.' People forget.
I've always liked my clothes, even before I could properly afford them. Clothes for me were never a cloak, a cover. They were how I chose to express myself.
No one told Miles Davis or BB King to pack it in. John Lee Hooker played literally up to the day he died. Why should pop musicians be any different?
When I listen to a record, or when I'm making a record, I listen to everything. I listen to the drums, the bass, the voice, the arrangement. I listen to the whole piece as an ensemble.
Playing live is what it's all about for me. It's cathartic, it's emotional, it's about communing with people. The way you feel after a gig is a such a powerful thing.
I forever felt that I've fallen right between the crack of way too young for the first generation of classic rock 'n' roll and too old to be brand-new. It's hard.
Well, there's that girl on the Internet - although this isn't an example of someone who doesn't know they're on - but there's a girl on the Internet who posts one photograph every two minutes from her bedroom.
I believe that the only people who really, truly benefit from any of the policies of Republicans are the wealthy. I'm in that 1 percent tax bracket, but I'm not a man of wealth.
During the 2008 election, I made clear to the Obama campaign that I don't think it's wise for me to force my personal political agenda on anyone.
The president is just the coach of a football team. You need the right support, the right stadium, the right players, the right staff. An excellent coach is not going to win games.
Where I'm fortunate and why I think I've thrived and survived, through the not having albums out every year-and-a-half, is not taking the songs lightly and trying to make sure I've got consistency.
But I have vertigo... I lose my equilibrium easily. I can lean out to look at something and just keep leaning and not realize I'm about to fall.
Some people grab my hair and pull it out. People write on my jeans when I'm on stage. They write on my boots - their phone number, name or whatever.
Those two songs condense the two albums. They also show what the audiences wanted. I was desperate to keep the band together and find something that the public would like.
Normally when we go in and write the songs we write, we think about doing a cover, but never a covers record. That would be, for us, a concept. We don't want to have a concept!
I started working with Bob in 1965. We did go through a lot of changes from 65 to 74, a lot of changes. By 1974, everything had straightened itself out.
We played all of the songs on the first Johnny Winter AND every day before we recorded them, so that when we got in the studio, it was totally easy, as we knew exactly what we wanted to do.
