Being the front guy is a hard job.

I toured around for years, but the road was always a drag for me. I never made a dime. In fact, I lost a lot of money - it was horrible.

'Geronimo' was a huge amount of work. That involved 80-piece orchestras and Indians and Tuvans and all kinds of crazy people on that thing. That's a real circus, that score.

Who does this, at age 71, try to put a tour together from scratch? I have to say it's scary at times. But I like a challenge 'cause it keeps you on your toes.

The '50s was the golden age of music all over the world for some crazy, 'X-File'-like reason I can't quite understand.

I just feel that music is a great life because it's very rewarding. It's a gratification. You do this for yourself, and you also do this for other people.

I keep my mind on track, and I don't get mad, and I don't get frustrated. Well, I do... but creative work, it's a way of controlling all that.

If you're taught to hate and fear a people or a country, and it works, it's because of your ignorance of that country. You have no contact with it, nor do you know what you're hating and fearing.

Music creates complicity, and then you feel less isolated.

I don't understand the public, but I do believe the public is oversold and underrated every day. Give the people something interesting, something to chew on, I say.

Santa Monica, where I have always lived, is not a town where you will find storefront Church of God in Christ churches. So, the whole idea of gospel quartet singing is something I never knew existed until I began to hear it on record.

If it hadn't been for record people like Ralph Peer, the Chess brothers, and Alan Lomax, then life would've been unbelievably dull, and I would've been sacking groceries somewhere and probably, at this point, running a little 7-Eleven down by the airport.

People have all sorts of expectations which you can't meet. Me, I'm so reclusive I stay away from such things as much as I can. I never go anywhere.

I always thought East L.A. music was so dreamy and languid and kinda greasy.

Beautiful tunes are all very good and fine, and great musicians are always great, but that alone isn't enough. Most folks, when they see movies or hear records, need something that they find pulls them in, draws them in, and appeals to them beyond just the notes.

I've done a fair amount of commercials. I did a bunch of Champion spark plug ads and Levi's and Molson Beer. You wouldn't know it. But some of it's damn good.

Politics runs on power and money and on ignorance.

American global economic imperialism is a fact. It's a known fact. It's a simple fact.

It all started back in '69 when I worked with Jack Nitzche on 'Performance.' That was my first experience of doing soundtracks, and I've enjoyed doing them ever since.

Country hillbilly music I love. Always have.

You have to be able to improvise and respond to what's going on around you. Then you might get a good piece of work done.

When the real world intrudes on your musical fantasies, I get put out.

I can't help what people write or think. If somebody thinks I'm a serious archivist, they're wrong. That's been a problem. It's a shame people take that attitude, because it affects how they listen to the music. It's a big mistake to treat any pop music that way.

I'm used to music as a tool, taking the various elements and then making something completely new out of them. And writing film music is the perfect opportunity to do that, because you can look at the film and then just let your imagination soar.

The blues is so expressive - nostalgic but not sentimental, mournful but not pathetic, so humble and close to the earth. It's a nuance-filled thing.

It's tremendously expensive to make a record on the basis of writing checks.

I'm a man of peace.

I think all the music I do, which ties together, as far as I'm concerned, is fun and entertaining.

I always like spoken word records.

'Buena Vista Social Club' is a great song and a difficult tune to play.

To me, the essence of the music is the most important thing.

The story of American pop music is the story of failure. The blues, country music, it's not the story of success. People don't win; they lose.

When I made the first album, I was 24, and at that age, you have nothing to say. I just played the music I loved and tried to do it justice.

Critics don't sell records, unfortunately. No one reads what they write anyway.

It's good to see more young people playing instruments.

On any given day, if I play the guitar, I can put myself somewhere. I always thought, 'This is the way you go.' It's like a magic carpet, see?

I always have felt that most people don't have the first idea about what musicians, in the traditional sense - I don't mean in the modern media fake way, but traditionally - what they went through, what their lives were like.

I wanted to be a car pinstriper, but there was nobody to teach me how to do it. So I said, 'Music's good too. I'll do that maybe, since I can't work out how to do this pinstriping.'

The Delmore Brothers is hit music - very, very popular - and it still retains that rural flavor and simplicity. I always think of it as family music, really, because families sang it.

I always loved country gospel from back when I was a teenager in high school and started listening to bluegrass quite a lot.

To me, the Internet is a big scam.

Uncle Dave Macon was a great balladeer and banjo player from the early part of the 19th century... He would take a social problem or something that he was looking at and make up a clever little song about it, you know, in a language everyone understood, a man of the people.

Having my son on drums has made a huge difference. I can't stress this strongly enough, in terms of the groove space and style that Joachim gave me to instinctively play what I felt in a more free way, rather than feeling constricted. That's true on record and on stage.

If something grooves and you like the sound, then that's all you need.

I like classical music. I especially like the French composers: Ravel in particular. Debussy. That's so soothing in a nervous world.

I used to sneak gospel tunes into my old records, just as kind of a personal thing.

I got a reputation for being 'eclectic' or some damn thing like that, but to me, the different kinds of music I play are all the same stuff - good time music - and it is the only stuff I can do.

The Woody Guthrie 'Dust Bowl' tunes were really fascinating.

I'm not interested in making folkloric records, but I like to push the traditional format around so that familiar patterns get knocked on the head.

People who love the applause should have it, but I don't care for it.