Citas

Given the choice between accomplishing something and just lying around, I'd rather lie around. No contest.

I am, and always will be, a blues guitarist.

[about "Layla"] To have ownership of something that powerful is something I'll never be able to get used to. It still knocks me out when I play it.

My original interests and intentions in guitar playing were primarily created on quality of tone, for instance, the way the instrument could be made to echo or simulate the human voice. At the time when I was still thrashing around on the acoustic guitar trying to sound like Leadbelly or Jesse Fuller, there was someone who had already achieved this particular goal. That was Hank Marvin [Hank B. Marvin] of The Shadows. He had found, and settled on, a clean, pure sound which disallowed any kind of ham-fisted playing. Only the lightest touch was permitted. The result was a marvelous mixture of clear, sweet melody over a strong rock beat (and what a great drum sound). On top of all this, he looked like Buddy Holly and played a real Stratocaster!

When all the original blues guys are gone, you start to realize that someone has to tend to the tradition. I recognize that I have some responsibility to keep the music alive, and it's a pretty honorable position to be in.

I would challenge anybody to come up with a better design for a guitar. The Stratocaster is as good as it gets.

[on John Martyn] So far ahead of everything, it's almost inconceivable.

The blues are what I've turned to, what has given me inspiration and relief in all the trials of my life.

My dedication to my music has driven everyone away. I've had girlfriends, but I always end up on my own. I don't particularly like it, but I don't see a way 'round it.

I'd love to knock an audience cold with one note, but what do you do for the rest of the evening?

We didn't really have a band with Cream. We rarely played as an ensemble; we were three virtuosos, all of us soloing all the time.

I went out in the garden and cried all day because he'd left me behind. Not because he'd gone, but because he hadn't taken me with him. It just made me so fucking angry. I wasn't sad, I was just pissed off. [explaining his reaction to the death of Jimi Hendrix]

[About his alcoholism during the 1980s] The only reason I didn't commit suicide was because I knew I wouldn't be able to drink anymore if I was dead.

[about Jimi Hendrix's death] That was the first time the death of another musician really affected me. We had all felt obliterated when Buddy Holly died, but this was much more personal.

[1976; Addressing his audience in Birmingham, England] Do we have any foreigners in the audience tonight? If so, please put up your hands. So where are you? Well, wherever you are, I think you should all just leave. Not just leave the hall, leave our country. I don't want you here, in the room or in my country. Stop Britain from becoming a black colony. Get the foreigners out. Get the w*gs out. Get the c**ns out. Keep Britain white. Listen to me, man! I think we should send them all back.

[Years later, announcing his regret for his racist comments in 1976 at Birmingham, England that spurned the Rock Against Racism movement] I was so ashamed of who I was, a kind of semi-racist, which didn't make sense.

[on modern rock artists] I thought that young bands like Oasis had learned from our mistakes. Instead, they are irresponsible and arrogant. They act like hooligans. They are a load of shit to me.

[on Jimi Hendrix and black musicians] When he first came to England, you know English people have a very big thing towards a spade. They really love that magic thing, the sexual thing. They all fall for that sort of thing. Everybody and his brother in England still sort of think that spades have big dicks. And Jimi came over and exploited that to the limit, the fucking tee. Everybody fell for it. Shit. I fell for it. After a while I began to suspect it.