Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I see music as a lifetime affair.
I was just fascinated by the blues.
I liked Slash. He's a nice guy and can really play.
Touring doesn't have to be a harried, cliched way of life.
Hardly a day goes by without me sticking on a Muddy Waters record.
I like a nice rumble on bass, openness on guitar and drums that breathe.
I started on acoustic guitar after I heard Leadbelly and Big Bill Broonzy.
I won't squander my credibility, whatever that is, just for one silly song.
I spend most of my time in London but I come back to Ireland whenever I can.
I didn't even have a record player as a kid, so everything was down to radio.
In my opinion, the P-90 is the best pickup for slide - it has the right overtones.
In the first band I was ever in, we all had to wear a matching grey suit. I hated that.
It's dangerous not to tour, because people assume you've faded away, or have no interest.
Basically, I like anything with guts - Lead Belly, Bill Big Broonzy, Johnny Winter, the Stones.
The best slide guitar, unless you're playing the Muddy Waters-style, is the old '52 Goldtop Les Paul.
There was nobody in the city I came from - Cork, Ireland - that I could link up with to teach me the guitar.
I've been playing a Fender since 1963, and before that it was my dream guitar. I can't endorse it more than that.
I've never commercialized my music. I've seen that ruin too many people who think two-minute ditties are the answer.
Obviously, I would like to play to bigger audiences and have a bit more success, but not if I have to commercialize.
Audiences aren't that different for my show from area to area. Other acts, I think, experiences differences, but not me.
Even though I was a rock 'n' roll fan, hearing the raw blues was like listening to music on a much deeper kind of level.
When I listen to something, I like to be taken out of my seat and thrown across the room. If it sounds good and feels good, that's it.
Playing live is my natural element. It's too hard to relax in the studio because there are too many options. It's just not as exciting.
One of the things that was crucial for me I got from Rory Gallagher, which was the idea of, like, being a guitar player for life and living it.
I didn't grow up working on 24-track - the first two Taste albums were eight-track and we always had tracks left over - we couldn't believe it, either!
You can play slide on any guitar, but to be serious about it you have a tough set of strings, otherwise you don't get the full attack - you can't dig in.
I think rock should always stay a little bit outside the pale; I think it should remain a little bit dangerous - a little bit ornery, as the Americans say.
The difficulties people have with me are purely musical things, never personality things. But, you know that's just the way it goes. I like to get things right!
I enjoy some nights in the studio. I'm not the greatest person in an enclosed space; I'm a live player by birth - like a gypsy folk player, I just sit in the corner and play.
One thing I really hate about people who play both acoustic and electric is if they try to play electric style on an acoustic guitar. You must develop it as a totally different thing.
The strange thing is I can't play jigs or reels or any of that traditional Irish stuff as well as I ought to, whereas I think I have got a good ear for blues, the tonality of it and so on.
I'm a great listener - I play records all the time at home. And I play guitar as a hobby. So inspiration has never been a big problem for me, but motivation can be a bit difficult sometimes.
A lot of the time I use slide tuning for rhythm parts. I play a lot of slide in regular tuning as well as open tunings. I'm still mad about slide, there are so many ways of progressing on it.
As a kid, I loved any guitarists, whether it was Elvis Presley, Lonnie Donegan, Chuck Berry or even the cowboy guitarists like Gene Autry and Roy Rogers. The image of the guitar appealed to me.
Basically, I try to treat the electric guitar like an acoustic guitar. What you have to do is attack the instrument and know that your feelings aren't controlled by the controls of your guitar.
I think that I set such high standards for myself that sometimes I expect other people to live up to these standards, and it's not fair because they're not setting the same goals for themselves.
If somebody needed a guitar player for a tour and I was free and it was the right situation, I'd do it and it would be good fun. There would be much less pressure if I just had to stand there and play leads.
Ideally, I'd really like to put my own stamp on things, but it takes years, you know, and you're constantly learning and studying and falling in and out with your instrument, learning different approaches and different attacks.
After writing quite a few songs now, I have not a method but a way of being patient with a couple of verses or a certain set of chords. I can match them up quicker now than I used to. The one thing you do improve is songwriting.
If anything, even though I can play in the sort of standard string-bending style, in the B.B. King mold and all of that, I've always had a great interest in the more primitive playing, the open chord playing, rhythm and figures.
I could bear being in the charts and being on everyone's car radio 10 times a day. I'm just terrified of... a lot of people I respect have done it with a real little 'ditty' and that was the end of it - that was all they were ever known for.
Lonnie Donegan and the folk movement were responsible for a lot of the spread of the blues in England. The group Them with Van Morrison was a big influence on me, too, as were The Stones; The Yardbirds, John Mayall, and the other British blues pioneers.
My favorite lineup is just a trio, because then every night you can improvise and change the repertoire. Keyboards and brass can be great, but it puts you in a different ballgame because you're not quite as free. You have to stick to the arrangement of the song.
All I really want to do is play, that's all that matters. I don't think I've ever tried to cultivate an image. Everything has been on instinct. The flannel shirt and jeans, for example... those are the clothes I wear. If I wore anything else on stage, I wouldn't feel comfortable.
The first songs I learned were 'It Takes a Worried Man' and Woody Guthrie's 'Grand Coulee Dam,' 'Rock Island Line' - those kind of American folk songs that were probably on the edge of blues. After that was Eddie Cochran and Chuck Berry songs. And then I heard Muddy Waters, Jimmy Reed and Big Bill Broonzy on the radio.
Playing live is much more natural for me. The instant reaction and the feedback from the audience is great for me. I really relish it. And if you play blues-based music, it's not really academic music or recital music. It really needs a bit of atmosphere and a bit of interplay and a bit of roughness, and you really get that with an audience.
Naturally, in 10 years, you change as a person and you learn a lot from your mistakes. You also learn a lot about wasting time and the right way to handle things. We're not touring as much. We're not doing eight or nine months of the year, so I've got a bit more time to get a perspective on what I do. I think I've improved my songwriting. I'm every bit as enthusiastic about playing as ever and I'm still learning.
It has affected me very much in the last 10 years. I get it from my grandmother. She was very superstitious as well. I'm funny about numbers. It's become a phobia, so I have to watch it. It affects your day a lot. Before I go on stage, there are certain things I do that are semi-sort of Gypsy superstitious things, but I'm coping with them. It hasn't affected the music, thank God. If you got really bad, you'd say "I'll pick that note instead of that one or sing this song before that.