Eric Clapton

“I don't have half the nerves there that I have anywhere else.”

“But I did go to music really early on, even when I was 4 or 5, I was responding to music probably in ways other kids were not.”

“It's very dependent on your state of mind. And your emotional state as well. And a lot of it comes pouring out, you don't really have that much control with it.”

“Risk is trying to control something you are powerless over.”

“I like solitude. I like the anomalous life. I like a quiet life.”

“The first one was quite cheap, but that was expensive for us. For my folks to buy on the Never Never. It was quite, you know, a rare object to have and I gained quite a lot of status by havi...”

“Yeah, I wanted to know where they got it from, what it was all about, you know, and it seemed to strike something in me that was you know rearing it's head and I still don't know what that i...”

“I never met Johnny Rotten, and I didn't want to meet Johnny Rotten.”

“I'm not a big fan of lead vocalists, people who sing but don't play. I never wanted to be in a band where the guy who was up front just sang. I've always thought it better when one of the mu...”

“The first guitar I ever had was a gut-string Spanish guitar, and I couldn't really get the hang of it. I was only 13, and I talked my grandparents into buying it for me. I tried and tried an...”

“It was stumbling on to really the bible of the blues, you know, and a very powerful drug to be introduced to us and I absorbed it totally, and it changed my complete outlook on music.”

“The toughest thing about being a celebrity, I suppose, is being polite when I don't want to be.”

“The blues are what I've turned to, what has given me inspiration and relief in all the trials of my life.”

“It was a mystery to me, how the tuning was, or the style seemed to come out of nowhere, it obviously had roots in America going way back, there was nothing like it for me I'd ever seen befor...”

“But the guitar, when you think about it, is the most versatile, really. I mean you can pick it up and take it with you wherever you go.”