I tried to play anything people would hire me to play, because I was a musician.
You're not a rock n' roll person four hours a day or even when you're on stage. It's become the rhythm of your whole life.
I've been married twice. Most women would rather not be married to a traveling blues singer.
I've never understood musicians who don't enjoy doing promotional interviews. I just can't believe it. I always think, 'Your life must have been so brilliant before you were in a band.'
I never really got to know Jimi as a person.
I'm not in it for my health. I'm a musician and I wanna live the way I do.
I just love to play music. I enjoy it more than anything. I enjoy it more than drinking with my friends in the pub. I'd much prefer to be playing live and playing the piano - playing is one of the most enjoyable things I do and I live for it. So it's very rare that I'd not be up for it. I'm very lucky to have something that I love so much; I don't know what I'd do without it.
As a musician, life is not over just because you are getting older, and so I find retirement a very frightening and dark thought.
I know a lot of people who are struggling musicians; it's a hard life, and I've risked being that. The rewards are tremendous now that I've made it, I thank God every day. But I put it all on the line for it.
People see you onstage and the glamorous side, but they don't see you traveling 600 miles a night, eating truck stop food and spending by yourself staring at walls.
The period of time between when you're done with a record and when you start touring is the worst period of a time in a musician's life.
I have done nothing my entire life but play music.
I laughed at Willie Nelson, wondering why he spends all his life on that tour bus. And I look at myself, and I'm sitting in airplanes half the time.
I always tell people, 'The music's free. I get paid to travel.'
I believe it was Nat King Cole that my dad took me to see, and we were sitting in the dressing room, and I blurted out to him, 'Why didn't you sing this?' Referring to whatever song I had wanted to hear, and he told me he was tired of singing it.
I want a life that makes music - not just practices the piano.
The guitar is my whole life.
In the day-to-day life of a traveling musician, it's easy to miss so many details. The world goes by at high-speed; it will take your breath away.
I almost tell him that I'd never be able to do something like that, just take out my instrument and begin playing on a street corner. But it feels to personal. Yes, I'm shy, but why bring it to his attention? I'm too shy to talk about how shy I am.
I'm playing with Bonnie Raitt. I don't have to sing it. I just have to play it. That's cool.
Burzum was never my choice of life. I didn't even want to become a musician.
I remember in the early days when we played six nights a week for a month and I was doing my long drum solo every night. My hands were covered in blisters.
That's the way a musician is. You're isolated, in a weird way, because music is haunting you as much as it's loving you. It's non-stop.
I'm very unstable; there's no stability in a musician's life at all. You live on a bus or on the road hand to mouth and you don't know where your money's coming from.
I think that's the graveyard of musicians, playing cabaret. I think I'd rather be dead than work in cabaret. It's just so depressing.
