I feel wonderful because I see / The love light in your eyes. / And the wonder of it all / Is that you just don`t realize how much I love you.

The first one was quite cheap, but that was expensive for us. For my folks to buy on the Never Never. It was quite, you know, a rare object to have and I gained quite a lot of status by having this.

I`ve got the god given talent or the god given opportunity better put, to let that out in a harmless way you know, and I don`t know what it does to you, I don`t really know.

A British pressing with a compilation of the best stuff really, I mean actually not only that but, these were all kind of semi hits for the people on it in America.

Yeah, and I went straight into a fantasy world. Just stepped straight into the abyss. You know, I was gone and kids used to walk past my front room, cause I lived on the green.

I just managed to convince my grandmother that it was a worth while that was something to do, you know, and when I did finally get the guitar, it didn`t seem that difficult to me, to be able to make a good noise out of it.

It`s very dependent on your state of mind. And your emotional state as well. And a lot of it comes pouring out, you don`t really have that much control with it.

Yeah, I wanted to know where they got it from, what it was all about, you know, and it seemed to strike something in me that was you know rearing it`s head and I still don`t know what that is.

This moment in time, on this tour, you know, I`m discovering a lot of new things. And to be 45 and doing that, it`s a mixture of pleasure and pain, I can assure you.

When you came knocking on the door this morning I was quite happy playing the guitar, for fun, I mean and not practicing and I`ll always be that way.

Although they can do it all the time, you know, they`re far better than me, on a musically, on a theoretical music level. You know, they`re out of my league.

It was a mystery to me, how the tuning was, or the style seemed to come out of nowhere, it obviously had roots in America going way back, there was nothing like it for me I`d ever seen before.

You know, that`s it, there`s no turning back because what it`s made of is so fine. It`s like crystal, you know, it`s like the purest crystal.

I mean, it didn`t matter to me that there were people, it didn`t matter that I was shy Just the sound was so captivating that it helped me to get rid of those inhibitions.

They looked great, you know the drawings of the guys playing looked great and bits of string around their necks. So it didn`t seem to be that difficult a thing to do, or that inaccessible.

I don`t have half the nerves there that I have anywhere else.

Oh yeah, I mean, it wasn`t a very good guitar, most good guitars have got thrust rods in the necks that you can adjust or that`ll keep them in shape, you know keep them straight. This one just, well it turned into a bow and arrow after a couple of months.

I mean, the sound of an amplified guitar in a room full of people was so hypnotic and addictive to me, that I could cross any kind of border to get on there.

You were at school and you were pimply and no one wanted to know you. You get into a group and you`ve got thousands of chicks there.

One summer I remember, I got exposed to Chuck Berry and Buddy Holly and Buddy Holly was a very very big, made a very big impression on me. Because of a lot of things, you know, the way he looked and his charisma.

Very much like that, and very much a loner, do you know and I didn`t fit really into sport or all kind of group activities as a kid, I couldn`t find a niche. And music was not really part of the kind of village curriculum it would, you know.

Yeah, it is, because it`s a real discovery of your inner resources, you know. That`s what my character is all about and what my playing is all about. But to get up there and just go inside and draw out something that makes you feel good first and foremost.

It was stumbling on to really the bible of the blues, you know, and a very powerful drug to be introduced to us and I absorbed it totally, and it changed my complete outlook on music.

Leave bands, go back to obscurity if I choose to, without a great sense of loss of security because it`s all been based on the fact that I did it on my own or was doing, enjoying doing it on my own in the first place.

So far ahead of everything, it`s almost inconceivable. (On John Martyn)

The blues are what I`ve turned to, what has given me inspiration and relief in all the trials of my life.

[on John Martyn] So far ahead of everything, it`s almost inconceivable.

I would challenge anybody to come up with a better design for a guitar. The Stratocaster is as good as it gets.

When all the original blues guys are gone, you start to realize that someone has to tend to the tradition. I recognize that I have some responsibility to keep the music alive, and it`s a pretty honorable position to be in.

My original interests and intentions in guitar playing were primarily created on quality of tone, for instance, the way the instrument could be made to echo or simulate the human voice. At the time when I was still thrashing around on the acoustic guitar trying to sound like Leadbelly or Jesse Fuller, there was someone who had already achieved this particular goal. That was Hank Marvin [Hank B. Marvin] of The Shadows. He had found, and settled on, a clean, pure sound which disallowed any kind of ham-fisted playing. Only the lightest touch was permitted. The result was a marvelous mixture of clear, sweet melody over a strong rock beat (and what a great drum sound). On top of all this, he looked like Buddy Holly and played a real Stratocaster!

[about "Layla"] To have ownership of something that powerful is something I`ll never be able to get used to. It still knocks me out when I play it.

I am, and always will be, a blues guitarist.

Given the choice between accomplishing something and just lying around, I`d rather lie around. No contest.