Musician

Voice is the first instrument.

Music is a living art. You re-create it.

I renovate homes and buildings and residences in Detroit.

I'm lucky. It's okay that success has come later to me, because I might have burned up if it had happened earlier.

There are no guarantees in the music field. There's a lot of rejection, a lot of criticism and a lot of disappointment. You have to be prepared for that. And after 1973, it just wasn't happening for me.

I don't like litter and blight.

Entertainment news doesn't interest me.

I'm a worker, but I think that all workers get an idea of what to do to get free. Any kind of bondage, even economic bondage, is slavery.

I like language, words. And I think the survival skills I've developed over the years have added a lot to my perspective.

I have a sloppy style of playing guitar. A percussive style. Unique in fact.

I'm not getting old, I'm getting dead.

In Detroit there are a lot of houses they are going to demolish because no one is taking care of them.

Some bands don't do covers. I love music. I've done the '40s, the '50s, 'the '60s, the '70s, the '80s, the '90s, the '00s, and I'm working on the '10s.

I got my style. I got my own way of playing. I'm a musician. I'm self-taught.

I like people who can write and sing, and play an instrument.

I think that many of the issues they were facing in South Africa were the same as those I was singing about. Conscription, resisting the draft, government repression - I mentioned all those things in my songs.

I play by ear - I'm self-taught. And so everything I do is through that technique.

I always like to say that you've got to... use all your talent.

Whenever I speak, I talk to the collective consciousness of my audience.

You want to know the secret of life? It is to breathe in and out. And the mystery of life? You never know when it is going to end.