My advice to new artists is to forget about all of this and take acting and dancing lessons and become a video star.
The Joker,' I made the album in 17 days and it was my last shot.
My dad was kind of a hipster, and a doctor.
I'm very proud of my dad.
From the time I was 12 until I was 21, Chuck Berry was my favorite artist.
When Chuck Berry came along, what he did was more rock & roll than it was blues. It was more exciting. He was like the next step. I thought his first single, 'Maybellene,' was the greatest song in the world.
In 1956, I began playing in a band with Boz Scaggs.
I love performing, and connecting with an audience never gets old for me.
There aren't very many clubs. There's no place for people to develop and play.
From a small child to right now - I mean, when I was five years old, Red Norville, Tal Farlow, Charles Mingus, Les Paul, Mary Ford, people like that were coming over to my house. So I was around professional adult mature musicians who had had big careers.
You know, songs like 'Rock'n Me' were actually written to be played in large... for a hundred thousand people kind of gatherings. And a lot of what came out on 'Fly Like an Eagle' and 'Book of Dreams' was music that was put together to be played in big, big venues with big light shows.
I play for the audience's pleasure. What I expect from them is not important; it's what they expect from me.
What I always expect to deliver to my audience is a very entertaining evening of singing and playing.
Just trying to make my music as good as possible and to keep performing and just keep moving.
Blues has always been a huge part of my life.
For guitar players especially, blues is the foundation of rock and roll. You take country music and rock and roll and jazz and you mix it together, and that's my basic makeup.
I've known Chicago for 50 years; we used to play shows at the Avalon Ballroom.
I have my own studio. I'm in it all the time.
We'll go out and we'll be playing in front of 15,000 people and say, 'Hey, we're going to do three new songs from something we just recorded' and 5,000 people get up and go get a hot dog and a beer and they don't come back until they hear the opening strings of 'The Joker' or 'Fly Like an Eagle.'
I love performing, and connecting with an audience never gets old for me, but it does get old for me when my audience is just only interested in something they've already heard.
