J. J. Cale

“Ask any guitar player - it's hard to feed yourself when you're picking for a living.”

“If you write songs long enough, you run out of material that's original to yourself.”

“When I sit down and play the guitar, I'm 20 years old again.”

“If I was strictly an artist, I'd have to learn to dance and get a shiny suit and stuff.”

“Music is a kind of magical thing, and you can't make magic every time, but you try. Every once in a while it has that magic, and the audience knows that. I probably miss it more than I hit it, but I think that's what all musicians try for.”

“That's kinda what happened to me: I listened to jazz, country, R&B, rock 'n' roll. And when I sat down to write a song, I had all these influences comin' through.”

“Clapton was just picking up ideas. He picked up some of mine like I picked up some from the people before me.”

“So, my records really didn't sell, but musicians started picking up on my sound and my songs and cutting my songs and that turned into a gold mine.”

“People have heard my music, but all my famous songs were made famous by somebody else... But that was my goal.”

“Sometimes I make up songs, and they're just strictly fiction. Other times, I draw on things that have happened in my life or friends, women, all sorts of things.”

“I'm basically a songwriter, man. Songwriters are down in the fine print, you know? And I really enjoy that.”

“Sometimes the simplest forms of music are the hardest to play. Especially for musicians that are accomplished.”

“When they say, 'Well, you gotta do some interviews on TV,' I went, 'Oh, I like to watch TV, but I don't wanna be on it.'”

“That's one of the problems in being a songwriter and living a long time. What you eventually end up doing is you start imitating yourself.”

“Nobody really produces my albums.”

“People are familiar with my songs, especially through Eric Clapton. But I have a hard time drawing a crowd, because I have been a songwriter.”

“I basically make my living writing songs, so I've been able to go around in my trailer. If I got tired of a place, I could move on and roam around. It's a nice environment for writing songs, as opposed to sitting at a recording studio console all day.”

“Yeah, Lynyrd Skynyrd, I knew all them guys.”

“Where I grew up in Tulsa, Oklahoma, it wasn't the south-east and it wasn't the deep south and it wasn't quite the south-west either.”

“I was a studio engineer out in L.A. for about six or seven years, and I played sideman for different people, and played in bar bands. I was an old man of 32 when I made my first album.”