Growing up in Dallas, my first influences on the guitar were T-Bone Walker and Les Paul. T-Bone taught me how to play lead guitar behind my head and do the splits in 1951 when I was nine.
From the minute I became aware of Jimmie Vaughan and his playing, he was one of my very favorites. So I made it my business to meet him and become friends with him - to work with him and record some of his material.
As soon as I understood what was going on in San Francisco, which was in 1965 and '66, I immediately left Chicago where I was working in a nightclub that was being shaken down by the mafia and the police for payments. I mean, it was a real thug world.
Rock 'n' roll guitar came from blues guitar. It was the blues guys who first turned the amp up and started whacking on the Stratocaster and a Les Paul. It wasn't the country guys and it wasn't the white guys; it was the Blues guys. That's where the real fire is in all of this rock and roll music.
There aren't that many people that cover my music. It's kind of hard to cover. Everybody always has their own spin. The only guy who didn't, I think, was Seal. It just sounded like a bad version of 'Fly Like an Eagle.'
Dealing with Jazz at Lincoln Center and its board of directors, who are so great, and then seeing how these Rock Hall guys operate, it's like: 'Really?' It seems like they're total amateurs when it comes to doing shows and contracts.
Giving a record company an album is like giving a gangster your baby or something.
The audience wants to hear 'Rock n' Me,' 'Space Cowboy,' 'Living in the U.S.A.' When you start to play something else, you can feel the interest and enthusiasm go; the steam goes out of room. They are really 'Greatest Hits' fans and that's what they want to hear. It's disappointing that it's this way in the U.S.
When I was a kid, I never thought I would ever be able to make records and never really thought seriously about a musical career because a musical career was being Fabian or Frankie Avalon or something. It didn't make any sense. There wasn't any possibility to get into that world.
I want to entertain my audience. I know when then come and see me play, if I don't do 'Swing Town,' 'Jet Airliner,' 'Take the Money and Run,' 'True Fine Love,' 'Fly Like an Eagle,' 'The Joker,' blah blah blah - if I don't do all those songs, they'll be extremely disappointed. I love to do them.
I was living and working with adult men who were playing a real art form. And I had been playing blues all my life. As soon as I formed my first band, we played Jimmy Reed stuff. So it wasn't like I was a white kid who was learning the blues from B.B. King records.