 As far as other instrumentalists, I used to love mellow sax players like Paul Desmond. I love piano. |
| I was a guitar player first off. |
| I really just followed my musical instincts every step of my life. |
| 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 not a jazz singer. |
| A lot of what I have always done is do other singers. |
| This is a cause that musicians can take to heart because one of our main reasons for being is to share our music with other people, and this takes us to people who probably wouldn't otherwise get to hear music on quite this level. |
| My first love was the sound of guitar. |
| My earliest influences were things I heard in my household. |
| 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. |
| 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'm easily distracted by other things in the world around me. |
| 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. |
| My parents were music lovers and collectors. It was around. |
| I love all kinds of music. |
| 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. |
| The short answer is, yes, I think I have become a better singer. |
| There's a whole lot of songs that men just can't do. The words are from another time and represent too much of an emotional commitment, whereas women can say that because of who they are. |
| I feel fortunate that I was able to step away from it when I wasn't interested. |
| There is not a lot that keeps me glued to the radio as I used to be. |
