The name 'Boss' started with people that worked for me... It was not meant like Boss, capital B, it was meant like 'Boss, where's my dough this week?' And it was sort of just a term among friends. I never really liked it.
I have to write and play. If I became an electrician tomorrow, I'd still come home at night and write songs.
For me, I was somebody who was a smart young guy who didn't do very well in school. The basic system of education, I didn't fit in; my intelligence was elsewhere.
I was in my late 20s, in the process of shaping my musical outlook and what I wanted it to be about, when I first encountered Woody Guthrie.
You need two things to remain very, very present. You need to continue to write well and engage yourself in the issues of the day. And you have to continue to make good, relevant records.
I think you have a limited amount of impact as an entertainer, performer, or musician.
In the past, some of the songs that were the most fun, and the most entertaining and rocking, fell by the wayside because I was concerned with what I was going to say and how I was going to say it.
But I think that your entire life is a process of sorting out some of those early messages that you got.
The best music, you can seek some shelter in it momentarily, but it's essentially there to provide you something to face the world with.
The first thing that I do when I come out every night is to look at the faces in front of me, very individually.
My dad was young; he went to work. But he'd been to war. He'd seen some of the world. It wasn't like he was going to be an extensive traveler or something. It didn't seem to be in his nature or in the nature of his parents or many of the folks in my family, really.
Somebody who can reckon with the past, who can live with the past in the present, and move towards the future - that's fabulous.
Every good writer or filmmaker has something eating at them, right? That they can't quite get off their back . And so your job is to make your audience care about your obsessions.
I like narrative storytelling as being part of a tradition, a folk tradition.
If I have a song that I feel is really one of my best songs, I like it to have a formal studio recording because I believe that something being officially released on a studio record gives it a certain authority that it doesn't quite have if it comes out on a live album or is just a part of your show, you know.
A good song takes on more meaning as the years pass by.
A good song gathers the years in. It's why you can sing it with such conviction 40 years after it's been written.
And whether you're drawn to gospel music or church music or honky-tonk music, it informs your character and it informs your talent.
I looked at myself, and I just said, 'Well, you know, I can sing, but I'm not the greatest singer in the world. I can play guitar very well, but I'm not the greatest guitar player in the world.' So I said, 'Well, if I'm going to project an individuality, it's going to have to be in my writing.'
I never felt I had enough personal style to pursue being just a guitarist.