Quotes from Jose Feliciano

I'm a one-man band!

I just happened to be Latino, and like any artist, I was trying to forge a career. If I opened doors for others, that's great, but nobody starts out with those aspirations.

I'm not like other guitar players. In fact, I'm not even like most acoustic players because I use the nylon-string acoustic. I do play steel-string and the electric guitar, too, because I love rock 'n' roll and guitarists like Jimi Hendrix. But my bread and butter has always been the nylon-string.

God did not want me to be a blind beggar on the street, alone and bitter. He gave me music, first to be my companion and then to be my salvation.

I was drawn to the guitar, and still am, because it struck me as the most soulful instrument.

To me, my guitar has always been my orchestra.

You can't write much quality, original music on a concertina.

The fact I'm blind has been a great help to my career. If I'd been sighted I'd have played baseball and got into trouble like all other kids on my block.

Music. It has always showed me that I could do what the other kids couldn't do. So I will keep playing and singing and entertaining, as long as the good Lord lets me. That is my life.

I taught myself until I was about 16. And then I studied classical guitar with some teachers.

There were screaming girls, I had to learn as a blind person how to run to a limousine otherwise they'd take my clothes off and stuff. I thought to myself 'how could this happen?' I mean I could see it, Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley, The Beatles, but Jose Feliciano? It was a mystery to me.

Now everybody has been doing the national anthem in their own style, but in 1968 I was the one that took the heat. It cut my career for quite a while.

The only thing I can say to the people of Israel is that I love them and I am a strong ally.

When I did the national anthem, I did a soulful, kind of gospel-y version, but it was controversial with the war veterans, just the people who wanted to hear it the old, clinical, atmospheric way, and I didn't want to sing it like that.

I made history and nothing can besmirch that. Nothing can erase that.

I loved John Lennon, by the way.

I never expected to have such a long career, it's been 52 years.