If there were 3,000 people in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the musical education would be so much better than this little elite thing.
Should the Moody Blues be in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame? That's absurd. Of course they should be.
Generally what you see happen is these talented kids make a great album, but they don't have a chance unless they have someone working with them who has integrity. They get thrown out by MTV and radio in six weeks, and they don't get any time to grow.
I met Les Paul when I was about 5. I was taken to see him perform and the place was sold out, just packed and full of really great musicians.
I love performing, and connecting with an audience never gets old for me, but it does get old for me when my audience is just only interested in something they've already heard.
From a small child to right now - I mean, when I was five years old, Red Norville, Tal Farlow, Charles Mingus, Les Paul, Mary Ford, people like that were coming over to my house. So I was around professional adult mature musicians who had had big careers.
I was living and working with adult men who were playing a real art form. And I had been playing blues all my life. As soon as I formed my first band, we played Jimmy Reed stuff. So it wasn't like I was a white kid who was learning the blues from B.B. King records.