Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I'm not a household name.
Nobody really produces my albums.
I've never sold a lot of records.
I've always enjoyed being a Gypsy.
I'm a great believer in freedom of speech.
You know, I write songs, I repair guitars.
Yeah, Lynyrd Skynyrd, I knew all them guys.
I was a late bloomer in the music business.
I love the rabbits and the squirrels and the birds.
What's really nice is when you get a check in the mail.
I rarely have any contact with the artists who cover my songs.
I figure that most people will remember me for the songs I wrote.
I was an engineer for a long time. I was a sideman guitar player.
You don't really need a lot of hype and to be famous to sell songs.
I was kind of a sideman. Then I became kind of a singer-songwriter.
I've always tried to come up with something that would catch your ear.
I'd like to have the fortune, but I don't care too much about the fame.
On the 'Escondido' album, I think it took us a month to make that album.
All artists are redundant about their own style; they can't escape themselves.
There are entertainers and there are musicians, and I never was an entertainer.
I tried to play anything people would hire me to play, because I was a musician.
What my whole object was is not to really sell records. I was trying to sell songs.
Ask any guitar player - it's hard to feed yourself when you're picking for a living.
If you write songs long enough, you run out of material that's original to yourself.
If I was strictly an artist, I'd have to learn to dance and get a shiny suit and stuff.
People said my records were 'funky' and 'muddy,' but the truth is they were just demos.
The only albums that I have personally named were 'number 5,' 'number 8' and 'number 10.'
I try and manufacture recordings to sound spontaneous. Then, some things are spontaneous.
I'm a recording studio guy, an engineer, a songwriter and a guitar player, in that order.
Oh, I'm not a very good singer, and that's 'cause I was always embarrassed about my singing.
Everybody lives in a city, cause there's not too many people in the small towns who can find work.
I remember when I made my first album, I was 32 or 33 years old and I thought I was way too old then.
I'd do the blues all the time if I could, that's what I'm into. But people just don't like to hear it.
All record companies want big-selling records, and my music is a little too raw for commercial success.
I'm basically a songwriter, man. Songwriters are down in the fine print, you know? And I really enjoy that.
Clapton was just picking up ideas. He picked up some of mine like I picked up some from the people before me.
I'd say writing songs is, for me, as much playing the tape recorder as it is playing guitar or writing words.
I guess if I'd have more of a producer attitude, maybe I'd sell more records. But I'm basically a songwriter.
I consider myself a songwriter... I guess the business end is my songs and the fun part is playing the guitar.
Sometimes the simplest forms of music are the hardest to play. Especially for musicians that are accomplished.
I'm an electronic manipulator. Most people think J.J. Cale, he's organic. There ain't nothing organic about me.
We used to say when we were 20 years old, that when you reach 30, you gotta hang up your guitar and get a real job.
If a guy came up and said 'we got a polka band and we're going to play polkas next Saturday night' I'd play polkas.
I played a lot of nightclubs in and around Tulsa till I was about 22, 24 years old, then I started travellin' around.
When they say, 'Well, you gotta do some interviews on TV,' I went, 'Oh, I like to watch TV, but I don't wanna be on it.'
I wanted to be able to play music, and then when I went out in my private life, my personal life, I didn't want to be famous.
I've always enjoyed playing. If all it meant were to just stand there and play my axe and sing, I could have gone on forever.
Makin' records is one art form and playin' live is another. It's like the difference between makin' a movie and doin' theatre.
Where I grew up in Tulsa, Oklahoma, it wasn't the south-east and it wasn't the deep south and it wasn't quite the south-west either.
Probably the only thing that I really don't like about being an old guy is so many of the people who understand what we know are gone.