By the age of 15, I knew over 40 Hank Williams songs.

Hank Williams seemed, like, so total to me, so committed to the lyric. He would actually rip the ends of the words off at the, you know – the end of the sentence. It sounded like he‘d bite into the word and rip it off.

Life is full of awe and grace and truth, mystery and wonder. I live in that atmosphere.

I have a full life off the road. I was never in it just for the money or the career. That’s why I’m comfortable with myself. I know who I am out of the spotlight.

I have a great band from Jersey and New York. I say that because they got great attitude, and we have a great time on stage.

Doo-wop was full of blues for me.

There were a lot of bad relationships that got very convoluted up at Columbia with me, what they expected from me.

I show rock and rollers how to grow old gracefully.

When I didn’t do ‘Runaround Sue‘ on the ‘Ed Sullivan Show,’ for example, I didn’t listen to my inner voice. I should have.

I want to rock till I drop. I love rock and roll music. It keeps you young.

I got one of the best sax players in the business – Arno Hecht. He plays with the Uptown Horns and all the great blues bands. He expresses the heart of the Apollo Theatre, let me tell you.

A lot of my friends, they think I grew up to rock and roll, but I didn’t. I grew up to Hank Williams, Jimmy Reid, Howlin’ Wolf, listening to a race record, blues.

The form of the blues helps us express our joys, our fears, our – anything you want to express. And it helps you get it out instead of it spiraling inward, and you’re getting twisted up and exploding. So it’s a bit of salvation.

That is amazing that a guy like St. Jerome who lived in the fourth century could bring people together. Sometimes you think people are dead and forgotten. But they can actually bring you together in the best way.

There’s a lot of unreleased blues stuff I did with the Apollo Theater musicians, and there was of experimenting going on for me in the mid-’60s in that studio, which I think frustrated Columbia.

Songs, to me, have always been kind of like a diary, you know – and, say, when I did ‘Teenager In Love,’ maybe I was 16.

I come from this macho Italian neighborhood. When I was thirteen, during those real vulnerable, impressionable years, and a boy starts becoming a man, to make that transition, and you start making decisions, and you start developing virtue and principles – I never made the transition.

I was a weird kid. I loved music, and I loved reading about God.

While Paul Simon is revered, I don’t think people get how deep he is. I love the guy. He comes from that early street-harmony, first-generation type of rock and rollers. He gets it.

If you make excuses, you’re going to believe in a lie. And I don’t believe in that lie that you can’t make it, that somebody is trying to hold you back.

A rock-and-roll group needed a name that fit criteria in three areas: It had to be great for a bowling team; it had to be great for a gang; and it had to be great for a rock-and-roll group. So we called ourselves Dion and the Belmonts.

We all fled from religion. Living la vida loca, whatever. The ’60s, you know. But it always stayed in my heart. As I got older, I started coming back to religion.

My first tour, for six weeks straight, was with Bobby Darin, in 1958. It was just fun hanging out with him. He was older than I was; he was a college guy. It was kind of a mutual-admiration society, I guess. He taught me how to pay taxes.

I moved my family down to Miami to stay with my father-in-law, Jack, for a while. Best move I ever made.

What are you gonna fill your life up with when you don’t have that ultimate satisfaction or peace in your life? You try to fill it up with wealth, pleasure, honor, power, sex, drugs and Rock and Roll to try to feel good.

I feel really relevant and creative, and I don’t think I would’ve made an album if I didn’t feel relevant. I wouldn’t have said a word.

I know they call it the British Invasion, but musically, I call it the British Infusion.

I used to think God only liked organ music.

I never got into this business to do interviews. It was always about the music.

With Del Shannon – and I’ve got to tell you this – there’s nobody probably on the face of the earth that I identified more with musically. We used to sit and sing George Jones and Hank Williams tunes.