I've had a blessed life. I've pulled back from trying to control my destiny and gone back to accepting whatever fate has in store for me. I live for today because I don't know what'll happen tomorrow.
Yes, I had to learn how to live life outside, but I had so many people help me.
Islam really brought a discipline to my life that I didn't really have before. My old mindset was if they ain't helping me, I ain't helping them, but you can't live life that way.
Mick Jagger has been an idol of mine since I was 10 years old. Through his music, he has taught me so much about rock n' roll, but also about the blues and about the experience of live music, going to several Rolling Stones shows, growing up.
The real test of a musician is live performance. It's one thing to spend a long time learning how to play well in the studio, but to do it in front of people is what keeps me coming back to touring.
Live performance really terrifies me. I haven't done it, really, in years. I think that's why I retired from my brief career in stand-up.
I thought the world of live performance and busking was where I was going to thrive. I had no idea that digital streaming platforms and radio and that world would be for me, you know?
It was always difficult for me to listen to my singing voice for the first 20 years or so. I mean, I really enjoyed singing, and I enjoyed doing live shows, but being in a recording studio and having to hear my voice played back to me would really drive me up the wall.
I don't think that there's much that sets me apart from other musicians, but I think there are definitely things that set me apart from other kinds of artists. I feel that musicians do it their own way, write their own songs and put on a great live shows.
There are some commercial artists that have number one after number one, and you go to their show, and the show's one-note. Yeah, they're all hit songs. But there's no emotion, because they're the same kind of hit songs, because they're what works at radio. That kills live shows for me.
I'm honored when young people say they've gone to school on slide guitar with my records. But people get their influence from my live shows and records and YouTube, not me personally. I walk around with a hat on. People don't know it's me.
The behind-the-scenes kind of process at TV, especially live television - that was super scary, but I think it's made me more comfortable now. If I ever have to go on live TV, I at least remember what it was like when I was 16.
Live theater to me is much more free than the movies or television.
Playing in front of an audience was just such a turn-on for me, and you have 200 people in the audience and it's like doing live theater. And filming something that goes to millions of people several weeks later, it's an interesting dynamic.
Theater in Chicago will always be my first love. It started careers for me and about 50 of my friends. We all love coming back. As soon as the TV show is over, I'll be back in Chicago, doing live theater.
I enjoy all forms of writing, but playwrighting is what made me what I am. Not only working with the ghosts of Chekhov and Ibsen and Shakespeare, but what it is to be a playwright, to be interacting with human beings in the live theater and affect people on such a direct, emotional level.
I'm just so used to music videos or live TV, so to really see something that's scripted and you have to do it over and over again to get every angle - it's fascinating to me. I would love to do a little acting.
You put a microphone in my hand on live TV, and that's just an opportunity for me to get ahead in life. That's the way I look at it.
In 1985, I was the host of a talk show, 'Hot Properties on Lifetime.' Hulk Hogan was on the show. He put me in a headlock and rendered me unconscious and let me fall to the ground. I split my head open and got nine stitches - and this was on live TV.
Why, except as a means of livelihood, a man should desire to act on the stage when he has the whole world to act in, is not clear to me.
