Quotes from Joe Cocker

People have said I played some pretty amazing gigs in the seventies, but in all honesty, I probably played one good show in three.

Love lift us up where we belong.

I've been touring now since about '68.

I like to use effects, but a lot of the time I just can't deal with these tracks with all these artificial sounds.

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 love songs that have a rocking and grooving feeling.

Back then, I, most rockers loved Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis... you know in the '60s.

I used to slap my hip to keep a beat.

I don't think you can live as long as I have in rock n' roll and not take a few hard knocks.

I always encourage my promoter to see if we can go someplace new. And he'll go, 'OK, how about Armenia?'

'You Are So Beautiful,' I think, is probably the, you know, the strongest tune I ever did in just the simplicity in it.

Yeah, one of the main ways is for songs that make me want to move.

I only look at things in a short term of a few years, but admittedly, I reevaluate what I'm doing, and whether I want to continue touring or not.

Well, we have this place in Telluride, Colorado. It's somewhere I can just get away and relax and think.

I think to be a good songwriter, you have to be able to play an instrument.

In the end, I don't think you can find soul. Soul finds you.

For me, the focus are songs, which really get the audience moving.

I still like the stuff from the old days: Marvin Gaye, Donnie Hathaway.

My strongest audiences are in Germany and France - they stuck with me through my dark days in the '70s.

It's all a matter of hearing what I like and seeing if I can make it fit into my style.

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?

The world is a tougher place to live in than it was back then, as we come into the computer age.

Europe is usually where I am usually galloping around.

Oooh I get by with a little help from my friends.