A biography for Joe Cockerhasn’t been written yet.
“Once you get into entertaining a quarter of a million people, it's a very weird place to be.”
“I don't think you can live as long as I have in rock n' roll and not take a few hard knocks.”
“My strongest audiences are in Germany and France - they stuck with me through my dark days in the '70s.”
“When I used to put an album out, I knew everyone on the charts. There weren't that many bands. Now, I couldn't even name half the new groups.”
“People have said I played some pretty amazing gigs in the seventies, but in all honesty, I probably played one good show in three.”
“To be on the road, even if you're not that happy, is all right, as long as I'm pourin' me heart into it.”
“It's interesting, as I said on the last tour in America, the audience actually came out, they had to have been the kind of fans who listened to my music via their parents, you know what I mean?”
“Rock and roll came into my life when I was about 12, 13, when Little Richard and Chuck Berry had just started hitting the shores of England.”
“I would like to be able to do a song with Ray Charles, before we both get too old.”
“Unfortunately I was in New York when 9/11 happened.”
“Over the years, I've worked with just about everybody.”
“I used to slap my hip to keep a beat.”
“There are people who'll dismiss me as 'just' a singer. That's how it is, how it's always been, but just because I'm not hunched over a piece of paper with a pen in my hand doesn't mean I'm not putting in the graft.”
“I like to use effects, but a lot of the time I just can't deal with these tracks with all these artificial sounds.”
“A lot of times when you're young and carefree, you don't realize, when you tip over the edge, how difficult it is to climb back in.”
“God, I'm just a fat bald guy, 60 years old, singing the blues, you know?”
“I'm no good at breakin' off with people.”
“Making music, if you're a real musician, you carry on regardless in this world.”
“In the end, I don't think you can find soul. Soul finds you.”
“I'm getting older; you realise you are on the countdown of what you are doing, so performing means more than it ever did to me.”