When I was holed up with [recording engineer] Emmitt Rhodes in California in 1977 doing my third album 'Thistles', he drove me nuts. We'd spend a day on a guitar trying to figure out if the final note should bend up or just quiver. I've been to both extremes: that meticulous attention, and the other extreme which is the excitement of a real live performance. My 'Kid Full of Dreams' album in '75 - we had handclaps and Beatles harmonies. I just did all of that stuff, and I loved it. At the same time, the core of that record was me and my band playing live.
