Quotes About Influence

I suppose in London they all drink from the same watering holes.

I wasn't a big fan of Instagram at first. I felt it was watering down the way music is perceived 'cause it made things seem more normal.

The press has met their Waterloo, and it's Obama.

I was essentially raised on blues music. My dad was a blues musician around Dublin when I was a baby, so the only music I would listen to growing up was John Lee Hooker and Muddy Waters. It's music that feels like home to me.

I love Muddy Waters and Nina Simone. I also watched 'The Blues Brothers' movie over and over.

My favorite country blues player was Big Bill Broonzy. City blues was Freddie King, but I liked them all - Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker, Ralph Willis, Lonnie Johnson, Brownie McGhee and the three Kings, B.B., Albert and Freddie. Jazz-wise, I listened to Django, Barney Kessel and Wes Montgomery.

I'm sort of standing on T-Bone Walker's shoulders, Les Paul's shoulders, Lightnin' Hopkins' shoulders, Muddy Waters' shoulders, you know? And if I've inspired other people, I'm pleased. That pleases me greatly.

It was Muddy Waters who took the Delta blues north to Chicago, electrified the sound, and changed the course of popular music as we know it. That's pretty much the judgment of history, and it is mine as well.

The first band I identified with from Chicago was the Muddy Waters band.

Muddy Waters, I suppose, was my first great hero. You know, every boy wants to be a guitar player, and Muddy Waters was just the king. He was the King Bee. He was it.

Little Walter and Muddy Waters were incredible. And Bo Diddley was doing some great stuff, too.

My Britishness waters my music down!

I look at John Lee Hooker and Muddy Waters, guys who had a fantastic longevity, and I learned something from them. They didn't try to sell records. They weren't saying, 'Ok, what can I write, what can I do in the studio that will sell?' They were just doing their thing, and people picked up on it. I like the idea of that.

Is there one blues guy who was the most sophisticated and influential, like Duke Ellington or Louis Armstrong in jazz? Was it Muddy Waters, Little Walter, Lightnin' Hopkins, John Lee Hooker, B.B. King, Robert Johnson, or all of them? I think you have to pick all of them.

It was awesome growing up listening to Oasis and Paolo Nutini, but I also loved growing up listening to Ray Charles and Muddy Waters.

My dad was very influential with the music he exposed me to. He was really into blues and folk, so he'd play me guys like Muddy Waters and T-Bone Walker and Richie Havens - a lot of very emotional players.

Ray grew up in Chicago so he had the blues, Muddy Waters and all that. He also had classical training. That was pretty cool. That was invoked in the intro to 'Light My Fire,' which was very kind of Bach-like.

Call me Shaky, not Michael. I've been Shaky for so long it would be like calling Muddy Waters McKinley, wouldn't it?

The great watershed of modern poetry is French, more than English.

Everything we do, even the slightest thing we do, can have a ripple effect and repercussions that emanate. If you throw a pebble into the water on one side of the ocean, it can create a tidal wave on the other side.

My generation, with Vlade Divac, Drazen Petrovic, Arvydas Sabonis, that was the first wave of European players that kind of opened the door for the world.

I grew up in the eighties; that's probably why I like some of the earlier electronic from Kraftwerk to all throughout new wave and things like that.

I'm rocking with PUMA - they got a lot of new wave, new talent, and they keep the new sauce.

You might as well try and dam Niagara Falls with toothpicks as to stop the reform wave sweeping our land.