John Mayall

You have to pack as much as you can in an hour or 70 minutes. This time around it was 15 songs, so it was a challenge to get them all the right length so you could get them all on.

I’ve never thought the blues was a matter of copying other people. The blues singer should sing songs about his own life. And once the ball got rolling, I felt confident enough to do that as well as cover other people’s songs, and the tributes. You’ve got to think about representing your own life in the music, and for me that meant bringing in an element of jazz; I was brought up on jazz, it was my father’s work, it was in the house.

Check out the albums, … Check out the live performances. That’s the reality of it all. Music is such an energizing thing.

I have good health and I am happy to be on the road all the time.

It’s part of what the blues does, to write about these things. JB Lenoir was the main one in this regard – he wrote about Korea, too, in fact. Songs that reflect these current situations – in his case, racial issues for the most part: in my case, what has happened to me, and I was in Korea.

Everybody I know in England was raised on Mose Allison.

I listen to everything, I listen to all artists that come along.

Just don’t give up trying to do what you really want to do. Where there is love and inspiration, I don’t think you can go wrong.

She’s Dynamite’ was a 100 years ago, and I recorded that song because the company thought that it was a great song and it was hot. That was the beginning of rock n’ roll, and I guess they thought it would be a BB King version of rock n’ roll.

Look at the tune and not make the same statement that has been made a million times.

I’m sure critics have their purpose, and they’re supposed to do what they do, but sometimes they get a little carried away with what they think someone should have done, rather than concerning themselves with what he did.

Everybody came. Everybody came to the Cotton Club.

I was born with music inside me. Music was one of my parts. Like my ribs, my kidneys, my liver, my heart. Like my blood. It was a force already within me when I arrived on the scene. It was a necessity for me-like food or water.

Jazz music just resonates with the frequency of me.

Not too slow, not too fast. Kind of half-fast.

Our music is generally the music I would play way back when I was in the record business. So I’ll play World Waiting For The Sunrise and How High The Moon, maybe Over The Rainbow, some standards. But it depends upon the artist that comes up – if people like a certain kind of music, I will focus the show that way. Whoever walks up on to the stage is the star – he is the picture, we are the frame. The frame is there to make the star look better – let’s make this fellow the best he’s ever going to be.

I first fell in love with the piano, I knew it was me. I was dying to play.

I’m fortunate that I’m making a living at it now because I’m not equipped to do anything else.

I like jazz, rock n’ roll, some hip hop – I can’t think of any music I don’t like.

Technique is the ability to translate your ideas into sound through your instrument.

One of the problems of people who live with pain is that they spend the whole day thinking about it, and it’s exasperating. But even when I am having a bad moment and I can’t get myself together, I get on stage and for an hour or two the pain becomes super-small. It’s about controlling the mind, telling the pain to step aside. Music does that. It’s the most fantastic drug in the world.