I have one message for young musicians around the world: Stay true to your heart, believe in yourself, and work hard.
— Joe Cocker
Rock and roll came into my life when I was about 12, 13, when Little Richard and Chuck Berry had just started hitting the shores of England.
I never picked up a guitar as a kid, partly because my dad didn't want the noise in our little back-to-back in Sheffield.
I always encourage my promoter to see if we can go someplace new. And he'll go, 'OK, how about Armenia?'
To be on the road, even if you're not that happy, is all right, as long as I'm pourin' me heart into it.
I'm no good at breakin' off with people.
When I used to put an album out, I knew everyone on the charts. There weren't that many bands. Now, I couldn't even name half the new groups.
My strongest audiences are in Germany and France - they stuck with me through my dark days in the '70s.
When I look back, I didn't take care of myself at all.
Well, we have this place in Telluride, Colorado. It's somewhere I can just get away and relax and think.
I love songs that have a rocking and grooving feeling.
It's nice to get a response from the artists that I cover.
I would like to be able to do a song with Ray Charles, before we both get too old.
I have sung to large crowds since then, and there is a feeling that once you get over 100,000 people, you kind of lose the control element, you don't know if you are really getting through or not.
It's interesting, as I said on the last tour in America, the audience actually came out, they had to have been the kind of fans who listened to my music via their parents, you know what I mean?
The world is a tougher place to live in than it was back then, as we come into the computer age.
I've been touring now since about '68.
'You Are So Beautiful,' I think, is probably the, you know, the strongest tune I ever did in just the simplicity in it.
In the end, I don't think you can find soul. Soul finds you.
I think to be a good songwriter, you have to be able to play an instrument.
I used to slap my hip to keep a beat.
In me soul, I'm gentle.
I think the only thing I would've ever been any good at was probably being a pub landlord. I've thought of that a couple of times.
Making music, if you're a real musician, you carry on regardless in this world.
People have said I played some pretty amazing gigs in the seventies, but in all honesty, I probably played one good show in three.
I'm getting older; you realise you are on the countdown of what you are doing, so performing means more than it ever did to me.
It's all a matter of hearing what I like and seeing if I can make it fit into my style.
For me, the focus are songs, which really get the audience moving.
God, I'm just a fat bald guy, 60 years old, singing the blues, you know?
Over the years, I've worked with just about everybody.
I have always been a sucker for ballads, but you have to be careful these days, you can't overload people.
I had a job when I was 16 at a gas fitter, which was a bit like a pipe fitter.
Unfortunately I was in New York when 9/11 happened.
Europe is usually where I am usually galloping around.
If you're going to have a cabin fever, have a big cabin, you know.
There are people who'll dismiss me as 'just' a singer. That's how it is, how it's always been, but just because I'm not hunched over a piece of paper with a pen in my hand doesn't mean I'm not putting in the graft.
I used to get so carried away while I was on stage that I'd be physically damaged by the end of a concert.
A lot of times, it's nice to open, because the heat's off you. You just go out and blast your set and say to whoever's going to finish, 'There you go.' Even though when you first start, people are drifting in, and that's kind of a bit disconcerting.
I could never deny myself bein' an artist.
I like to use effects, but a lot of the time I just can't deal with these tracks with all these artificial sounds.
I still like the stuff from the old days: Marvin Gaye, Donnie Hathaway.
A lot of times when you're young and carefree, you don't realize, when you tip over the edge, how difficult it is to climb back in.
I don't think you can live as long as I have in rock n' roll and not take a few hard knocks.
Yeah, one of the main ways is for songs that make me want to move.
Well, over the years, I've developed a stable of songs of which I'm known for and never get tired of singing.
Don't go on American Idol, I think you'll spend the rest of your life living it down and I think it's getting kinda scary, isn't it?
Once you get into entertaining a quarter of a million people, it's a very weird place to be.
Some of the songs I do once in a while that I kinda... my set list is basically like my hits, there is a good reason why they are there; people really like them.
Back then, I, most rockers loved Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis... you know in the '60s.
I was in Germany when the wall came down.
