Quotes

Given the choice between accomplishing something and just lying around, I'd rather lie around. No contest.

I am, and always will be, a blues guitarist.

[about "Layla"] To have ownership of something that powerful is something I'll never be able to get used to. It still knocks me out when I play it.

My original interests and intentions in guitar playing were primarily created on quality of tone, for instance, the way the instrument could be made to echo or simulate the human voice. At the time when I was still thrashing around on the acoustic guitar trying to sound like Leadbelly or Jesse Fuller, there was someone who had already achieved this particular goal. That was Hank Marvin [Hank B. Marvin] of The Shadows. He had found, and settled on, a clean, pure sound which disallowed any kind of ham-fisted playing. Only the lightest touch was permitted. The result was a marvelous mixture of clear, sweet melody over a strong rock beat (and what a great drum sound). On top of all this, he looked like Buddy Holly and played a real Stratocaster!

[on women] I don't believe I've really known them. I've often used women for very, very ulterior motives. As a crutch, as a means of kind of securing my identity, as a way of elevating my status, as a way of making my feel good about myself, um, or just to be mothered, you know, or for sex, there's a lot of different motives.

I would challenge anybody to come up with a better design for a guitar. The Stratocaster is as good as it gets.

[on John Martyn] So far ahead of everything, it's almost inconceivable.

[on Pattie Boyd] There were times when I took sex with my wife by force and thought that was my entitlement. I had absolutely no concern for other people... I didn't know it was rape. It just seemed like we were having a row and then it happened.

My dedication to my music has driven everyone away. I've had girlfriends, but I always end up on my own. I don't particularly like it, but I don't see a way 'round it.

I'd love to knock an audience cold with one note, but what do you do for the rest of the evening?

We didn't really have a band with Cream. We rarely played as an ensemble; we were three virtuosos, all of us soloing all the time.

I went out in the garden and cried all day because he'd left me behind. Not because he'd gone, but because he hadn't taken me with him. It just made me so fucking angry. I wasn't sad, I was just pissed off. [explaining his reaction to the death of Jimi Hendrix]

[About his alcoholism during the 1980s] The only reason I didn't commit suicide was because I knew I wouldn't be able to drink anymore if I was dead.

[on Sick and Tired] I'm gonna get me a shotgun, baby, keep it stashed behind the bedroom door. I may have to blow your brains out, baby. Then you won't bother me no more.

[1976; Addressing his audience in Birmingham, England] Do we have any foreigners in the audience tonight? If so, please put up your hands. So where are you? Well, wherever you are, I think you should all just leave. Not just leave the hall, leave our country. I don't want you here, in the room or in my country. Stop Britain from becoming a black colony. Get the foreigners out. Get the w*gs out. Get the c**ns out. Keep Britain white. Listen to me, man! I think we should send them all back.

F*cking wogs, man. F*cking Saudis taking over London. Bastard wogs. Britain is becoming overcrowded and Enoch [Powell] will stop it and send them all back. The black wogs and coons and Arabs and f*cking Jamaicans don't belong here, we don't want them here. This is England, this is a white country.

[on modern rock artists] I thought that young bands like Oasis had learned from our mistakes. Instead, they are irresponsible and arrogant. They act like hooligans. They are a load of shit to me.

[on Jimi Hendrix and black musicians] 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.