When The Who first started, we were playing blues, and I dug the blues and I knew what I was supposed to be playing, but I couldn't play it. I couldn't get it out. I knew what I had to play; it was in my head. I could hear the notes in my head, but I couldn't get them out on the guitar.
Sounds like the blues are composed of feeling, finesse, and fear.
Blues was my first love. It was the first thing where I said, 'Oh man, this is the stuff.' It just sounded so raw and honest, gut-bucket honest. From then I started rebelling.
The blues is instilled in every musical cell that floats around your body.
The blues is not the creation of a crushed-spirited people. It is the product of a forward-looking, upward-striving people.
Play the pentatonic blues scale, just for fret- and pick-hand dexterity and to mesh them both together.
'Post 9/11 Blues' is an observational satire about the surreal circus of fear at that time. It's a generational thing.
Blues are the songs of despair, but gospel songs are the songs of hope.
I wanted to be a blues guitar player. And a singer. And a songwriter. Not a shock jock.
Every time the guys were knocked out by my guitar playing and the girls were knocked out by the type of songs I did. That set us apart from the average blues band.
Jimi Hendrix came from the blues, like me. We understood each other right away because of that. He was a great blues guitarist.
I am, and always will be, a blues guitarist.
I was never really that interested in the punk movement. I was a blues guy: I liked Motown, James Brown.
I've always loved the blues, John Lee Hooker, Janis Joplin, Hendrix.
My musical education was grounded in blues and Chicago blues - John Lee Hooker and Otis Redding.
I used to listen to country and western and blues, John Lee Hooker, spirituals, the Bluegrass Boys, and Eddie Arnold. There was a radio station that come on everyday with country, spirituals, and the blues.
Linda's in all the songs. 'Sunshine Superman,' 'Hampstead Incident,' 'Young Girl Blues'... Linda's the muse.
'Tailgate Blues' is kind of a lyrical masterpiece of a country song.
I believe in blues, and I believe that it's been misrepresented.
I've always tried to defend the idea that the blues doesn't have to be sung by a person who comes from Mississippi, as I did.