JOE COCKER

A lot of times when you're young and carefree, you don't realize, when you tip over the edge, how difficult it is to climb back in.

I have one message for young musicians around the world: Stay true to your heart, believe in yourself, and work hard.

It's nice to get a response from the artists that I cover.

If you're going to have a cabin fever, have a big cabin, you know.

I love songs that have a rocking and grooving feeling.

I've been touring now since about '68.

God, I'm just a fat bald guy, 60 years old, singing the blues, you know?

Well, we have this place in Telluride, Colorado. It's somewhere I can just get away and relax and think.

I'm no good at breakin' off with people.

Don't go on American Idol, I think you'll spend the rest of your life living it down and I think it's getting kinda scary, isn't it?

It's all a matter of hearing what I like and seeing if I can make it fit into my style.

I have always been a sucker for ballads, but you have to be careful these days, you can't overload people.

Well, over the years, I've developed a stable of songs of which I'm known for and never get tired of singing.

Europe is usually where I am usually galloping around.

I would like to be able to do a song with Ray Charles, before we both get too old.

It's interesting, as I said on the last tour in America, the audience actually came out, they had to have been the kind of fans who listened to my music via their parents, you know what I mean?

Back then, I, most rockers loved Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis... you know in the '60s.

For me, the focus are songs, which really get the audience moving.

Once you get into entertaining a quarter of a million people, it's a very weird place to be.

Over the years, I've worked with just about everybody.

I had a job when I was 16 at a gas fitter, which was a bit like a pipe fitter.

I still like the stuff from the old days: Marvin Gaye, Donnie Hathaway.

I was in Germany when the wall came down.

In the end, I don't think you can find soul. Soul finds you.

Yeah, one of the main ways is for songs that make me want to move.