Jimmy Smith

Choosing people to be on your ‘Sammy Hagar and Friends’ record, you’re going, ‘I’ve got so many friends.’ And so many friends have called me up and said, ‘Come on dude, why didn’t you ask me to be on the record?’ I’m going, ‘Damn, I forgot.’ I really did.

It’s a matter of who would be right for each song. Mickey Hart for ‘All We Need is An Island’ – he’s the only guy I know who has Tahitian drums and every kind of drum on the planet.

Three months. I was playing the organ for three months. It was a challenge for me in the beginning.

Everybody has somebody that they patterned themselves after.

I heard Mr. Wild Bill Davis. I heard him play in 1930 and he told me that it would take me fifteen years just to learn the pedals, the pedals of the organ and I got mad.

People like the idea of the trio and so I did mostly trio.

Before our albums are released I feel like we still own it, that we have control over our music. But once it’s out there in the world it’s no longer ours.

I sometimes do worry that actors are people’s role models, you know. And doctors and teachers and people doing really important things just get paid nothing. And they put us on the cover of magazines. They should be our heroes. I find it all a bit dubious.

Cocaine is God’s way of saying that you’re making too much money.

I think women dress for other women to let them know what their deal is. Because if women were only dressing for men, there would be nothing but Victoria’s Secret. There would be no Dior.

[On her most dreadful crush] I used to drive, pretty pathetically, I’d just drive by their house all the time and they didn’t know who I was. I’d just drive by the house all the time. I once knocked on the window and I thought, “What am I doing? What am I going to say if they come to the door and don’t know who I am?”

I like to write about women, not so much about the way they relate to men, but about the way they relate to each other.

Ryan and I didn’t grow up like this at all, with this much attention. We’ll just try to keep their feet on the ground and raise them with the values we were raised with.

You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one. I hope someday you’ll join us. And the world will live as one.

The woman who did the costumes tried to put me in these Waspy clothes, and it just didn’t work. I feel like ethnicity and fashion go together. So, yeah, knockers up and tight skirts. Somehow it’s better.

[on turning down a role in ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’] I didn’t really fancy sitting in a hotel room in Los Angeles for nine weeks for two minutes on screen, to be honest. I don’t really want to be an actor. I want to write and direct. I’ve been offered about ten British films. Obviously all shit. I was offered one with Johnny Depp, but again, it was a small character part, and I thought, ‘What’s the point?’ No one’s ever watched someone in seven films for one minute and said, ‘Yeah, give him his own film’…it doesn’t happen.”

I love artists who take risks-I think they inspire everybody else about horrible situations that no one wants to discuss.

No, I was two years older than the other guys. I was a war baby. My family were a lot poorer than they were. I’d had to fight too hard for anything I had in my life and to smash things up for me.

[on acting] Sometimes I think, ‘To hell with acting’ and then I realize I could be working at a shoe shop. Acting is much cooler.

It’s fun to do a comedy and hook people in and then hoodwink them into watching a serious movie. I like to lead in with the comedy and then hit them over the head with a drama.

My first real kiss came when I was 10, and it was in an acting class. I had to do a scene from a movie where someone gets kissed under a tree, and I did not want to do it! But my acting partner wanted me to feel comfortable, so he bought a picnic basket with all these snacks. He made such an effort- and it was cute.