I have one message for young musicians around the world: Stay true to your heart, believe in yourself, and work hard.Collection: Work
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?
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 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.
I have always been a sucker for ballads, but you have to be careful these days, you can't overload people.
Back then, I, most rockers loved Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis... you know in the '60s.
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.
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?
Well, over the years, I've developed a stable of songs of which I'm known for and never get tired of singing.
Well, we have this place in Telluride, Colorado. It's somewhere I can just get away and relax and think.
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.
People have said I played some pretty amazing gigs in the seventies, but in all honesty, I probably played one good show in three.
My strongest audiences are in Germany and France - they stuck with me through my dark days in the '70s.
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.
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 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.
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.
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 always encourage my promoter to see if we can go someplace new. And he'll go, 'OK, how about Armenia?'
I used to get so carried away while I was on stage that I'd be physically damaged by the end of a concert.
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.
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.
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.