Popular Quotes Through Time

When he first came to England, you know English people have a very big thing towards a spade. They really love that magic thing, the sexual thing. They all fall for that sort of thing. Everybody and his brother in England still sort of think that spades have big dicks. And Jimi came over and exploited that to the limit, the fucking tee. Everybody fell for it. Shit. I fell for it. After a while I began to suspect it.

Music will always find its way to us, with or without business, politics, religion, or any other bullshit attached. Music survives everything, and like God, it is always present. It needs no help, and suffers no hindrance.

Musically I was fed up with the virtuoso thing. Our gigs had become nothing more than an excuse for us to show off as individuals, and any sense of unity we might have had when we started seemed to have gone out the window.

I had no idea how to do that, because I was either above or below everybody. I was either towering above as Clapton the guitar virtuoso, or cringing on the floor, because if you took away my guitar and my musical career, then I was nothing.

Let It Grow," and it was several years before I realized that I had totally ripped off "Stairway to Heaven," the famous Zeppelin anthem, a cruel justice seeing as how I'd always been such a severe critic of theirs.

During the pause while I was changing my string, the frenzied audience would often break into a slow handclap, inspiring Giorgio to dream up the nickname of "Slow hand" Clapton.

Every time you pick up your guitar to play, play as if it's the last time.

My driving philosophy about making music is that you can reduce it all down to one note if that note is played with the right kind of sincerity.

You can't mastermind everything. You'll go crazy. Just show up and play.

Whatever your standing in life, the most important thing is behaving in ways that help other people. It's the same with music. I am a servant of the music ... and if I get caught up in ego, I'll lose everything .. it'll burn and that's a guarantee.

All along this path I tread, my heart betrays my weary head, with nothing but my love to save, from the cradle to the grave.

When I saw Jimi Hendrix I knew immediately that this guy was the real thing ... and when he played it was like a rough sketch of what he was going to become ... this guy was our generation, and he wasn't in a suit .. he played a Howlin' Wolf song 'Killing Floor', and then we (The Cream) had to carry on the set. It was pretty hard to follow.

Up until I became a father, it was all about self-obsession. But then I learned exactly what it's all about: the delight of being a servant.

For me there is something primitively soothing about this music, and it went straight to my nervous system, making me feel ten feet tall.

I can't play long solos anymore without boring myself.

My definition of Blues is that it's a musical form which is very disciplined and structured coupled with a state of mind, and you can have either of those things but it's the two together that make it what it is. And you need to be a student for one, and a human being for the other, but those things alone don't do it.

If you hand me a guitar, I'll play the blues. That's the place I automatically go.

[Unplugged] was also the cheapest to produce and required the least amount of preparation and work. But if you want to know what it actually cost me, go to Ripley and visit the grave of my son.

I've always wanted the sound of Muddy Waters' early records - only louder

The music scene as I look at it today is a little different from when I was growing up. The percentages are roughly the same - 95 percent rubbish, 5 percent pure.