I'm very happy to have been a one-club man, but I wouldn't shoot down guys who have gone off and played in multiple clubs either because, essentially, it is an earning that people are after.
I'm certain that it was an incredible gift for me to not only be friends with some of the greatest blues people who've ever lived, but to learn how they played, how they sang, how they lived their lives, ran their marriages, and talked to their kids.
Every drummer that had a name, had a name because of his individual playing. He didn't sound like anybody else, So everybody that I ever listened to, in some form, influenced my taste.
I mean, I think I liked every band I ever played in because each band was different, each band had a different concept, and each band leader was different... different personalities and musical tastes.
To have everything written for you... It's not really creating. That's why I think symphony drummers are so limited. They 're limited to exactly what was played a hundred years before them by a thousand other drummers.
We didn't have practical model rockets in the '50s. The ones we made were very dangerous and the kids that played with them didn't have all their fingers, and sometimes were blind in one eye.
My management tells me, Don't be optimistic, because it's the young people's world now. They want to hear what they want to hear, and you're a classic rocker. I don't know if you're gonna get the play.
Unlike many in the conservative camp, I accept theories of global warming, and accept that man-made activity has played a part in global warming. My differences have only been on what the solutions should be.
My only general rule was to steer away from things I played with the band over the past couple of tours. I was interested in re-shaping the Rising material for live shows, so people could hear the bare bones of that.
I learned to play piano in a rock n' roll context or band context from country records - you know, Floyd Cramer - and from the Beatles and the Rolling Stones and Stax. And none of those are keyboard records.
Maybe I'm naive, but I subscribe to the idea that nobody is actually making strategic decisions about their career. Trying to do that would be like playing three-card monte on Canal Street.
As far as arrangements after the basic track is cut, if I'm writing a horn arrangement or playing strings, I might arrange that, plan that out. Other times, I'll just sit and roll tape.
I played the mini-tours for a lot of years, and man, you see some weird things out there. There are a lot of desperate people, strange personalities and marginal players, and with that you're going to see some cheating.
Kids below 10 or 12, I think they just need to learn by playing at golf. Later on, in high school, when they develop muscles and everything, that's when they need to see about getting lessons.
I enjoyed playing around with that guy, and it was a pleasure every three, four years, coming back seeing how the wardrobe is. Is he heavy? Is he thin? I had fun.
In '57, I got a job at the Blue Angel nightclub, and a gentleman named Ken Welch wrote all my material for me. I lived at a place called the Rehearsal Club that was actually the basis for a play called Stage Door.
I think that the benefit of playing someone like Queen Elizabeth is that so much has been written about her, and there's so much speculation about her - was she a hermaphrodite? She's so mythologised, and there are a lot of images of her.
We like playing smaller venues, but we know how many people want to come and see us so we don't ever want to stop anyone who wants to come to a show from coming.
In its heyday, the blazer had come to symbolise a kind of conventional decency. Yacht club commodores and school bursars wore blazers. People who played bowls wore blazers.
Growing up, me and my brother, we were kind of exact opposites. We were completely yin and yang. He was more rough and tumble, and I just wanted to play with my girlfriends.
The road Cordelia has travelled, the journey she has taken up to now has been such a joy to play as an actress, because there have been so many chances to do so many different emotions.
