From the time I moved to San Francisco in 1967 to play with the Steve Miller Band, there was a lot of support in the music community for one cause or another, but this one was special because it was put on by people who understood where musicians' hearts are.

As a guitar player, you can gravitate to the blues because you can play it easily. It’s not a style that’s difficult to pick up. It’s purely emotive and dead easy to get a start with.

Quite frankly, I’ve always listened to the black side of the radio dial. Where I grew up, there was a lot of it and there was a lot of live music around.

I am not a jazz singer. I wouldn’t place myself on that footing. I wouldn’t even enter that arena.

I feel fortunate that I was able to step away from it when I wasn’t interested.

I think the women – Lauryn Hill, Mary J. Blige, Erykah Badu – are doing new conceptual things and using their voices to create new American music.

I’m still trying to re-create a Ray Charles concert that I heard when I was fifteen years old, and all my nerve endings were fried and transformed, and electricity shot through me.

I felt that, in retrospect, there was a time in the late Seventies, after I had a string of hits and successes, as a performer and a recording artist, that I wasn’t saying anything.

I’m easily distracted by other things in the world around me.

I’m not a jazz singer.