That's why I've never made a live album - I can't bear listening to myself!
Eric Clapton's scales - when he comes off a high note and it's time for a refrain or a little bit of a rest, he peals off scales going downwards that are so good it's unbelievable.
Charley Patton is the original inspiration. I didn't play anything when I was a kid. Then, when I was 20, I went into my mam's bedroom because she had a double mirror, and I wanted to see what the back of my hair was doing. She had an alarm-clock radio, and it came on with this old guy moaning and hollering, playing this strange guitar.
In a funny way, the illness spurred me on. I thought to myself, 'I've got to get through this operation to make a blues album.'
I'd never intended to write a Christmas hit - I was a serious musician!
As soon as I paid the mortgage off in 1988, I started racing cars.
I read an article about 60 being the new 30 the other week, and I think it's very true. Our generation has not done what previous generations did and just got old and sat in a corner.
When 'The Road To Hell' happened, I didn't know what I was doing. Your diary fills up, and you have no objectivity. At home, you're trying your best to fit in. Sometimes I'd race from Heathrow to find myself sitting in a village hall watching my kids. It felt really weird. I didn't enjoy it.
It's bleak behind the Iron Curtain, although they do have the strongest vodka I've ever had in my life.
My father's family were Italian ice cream men, and the knowledge was passed on, so I ran an ice cream van while I was dating my wife.
I was born in the overdub years. I wish there wasn't such a thing as a multitrack tape player, because what you heard would be the record.
I will be happy if I am 60 because I was not supposed to be 60.
Ferraris are lovely cars, but I just don't want to be seen in them.
I'd become a corporate rock musician. I worked for 'Chris Rea.' He felt like another person. I even talked about him in the third person.
My ambition, a long time ago, was to be a film music writer. A compromise then was to be the guy who wrote songs for a band and played slide guitar. Then the singer didn't turn up for an audition, and I was the only one who knew the words. That was it - bingo! Life took a different course.
I played a gig at the Montreax Jazz Festival once - and on a song called 'It's All Gone,' I had to do free-form slide solo. It's the best thing I've ever done - because I wasn't thinking about it.
My father used to control the wholesale of many ice-cream items in Middlesbrough. He was central distributor for most of the region.
If I'm ever stuck on the M25 - the 'Road to Hell' - I'll wind the window down and start singing, 'I'm driving home for Christmas' at people in cars alongside. They love it. It's like giving them a present.
I think I've lost that ability to slow things down - that ability drivers have to calculate what's coming by you at tremendous speed. I used to have it.
I bought a Hofner guitar and amplifier for 32 guineas, then spent ages trying to make a bottleneck. At that point, I was meant to be developing my father's ice-cream cafe into a global concern, but I spent all my time in the stockroom playing slide guitar.
