Be authentic, true to yourself, genuine. Question what you really love along the way. There are so many voices out there. And you can lose yourself.
Life is full of awe and grace and truth, mystery and wonder. I live in that atmosphere.
I tell you, gospel music is very uplifting. It's great. It's just a lot of fun to write, and it's wonderful for the heart, soul, mind, and spirit. It's just great.
In New York, if you go into an Italian-American neighbourhood, the code of the streets is respect and reputation.
With Del Shannon - and I've got to tell you this - there's nobody probably on the face of the earth that I identified more with musically. We used to sit and sing George Jones and Hank Williams tunes.
When I didn't do 'Runaround Sue' on the 'Ed Sullivan Show,' for example, I didn't listen to my inner voice. I should have.
If I could sing and play like Lightnin' Hopkins, I would.
My first tour, for six weeks straight, was with Bobby Darin, in 1958. It was just fun hanging out with him. He was older than I was; he was a college guy. It was kind of a mutual-admiration society, I guess. He taught me how to pay taxes.
I don't believe in being a victim. I think with information and motivation, you can do anything.
I got one of the best sax players in the business - Arno Hecht. He plays with the Uptown Horns and all the great blues bands. He expresses the heart of the Apollo Theatre, let me tell you.
If you don't have God in your life, you have to fill up on something. And you usually reach for the four great substitutes, the classical addictions: wealth, pleasure, power, and honor. So you try to fill yourself up.
There were a lot of bad relationships that got very convoluted up at Columbia with me, what they expected from me.
I thought you had to be humble to become a saint, but a priest told me it takes all kinds to make it to heaven.
People were watching the TV set, and they said three rock-and-rollers died - Buddy Holly, Richie Valens, The Big Bopper, including the pilot. I walked out of the hotel. I got on the bus alone. Their clothes were hanging on the racks, their guitars on the seats.
That is amazing that a guy like St. Jerome who lived in the fourth century could bring people together. Sometimes you think people are dead and forgotten. But they can actually bring you together in the best way.
Hank Williams seemed, like, so total to me, so committed to the lyric. He would actually rip the ends of the words off at the, you know - the end of the sentence. It sounded like he'd bite into the word and rip it off.
My definition of the blues is the naked cry of the human heart longing to be in union with God.
For me, God's country is sirens and subways and all kinds of ethnic groups trying to cross the street all at once.
I come from this macho Italian neighborhood. When I was thirteen, during those real vulnerable, impressionable years, and a boy starts becoming a man, to make that transition, and you start making decisions, and you start developing virtue and principles - I never made the transition.
I've got these die-hard fans on Facebook, and you'd swear they haven't heard anything I've done since 1962, 1963.
