Joe Cocker

You're everything I hope for. You're everything I need. You are so beautiful to me.

I've been touring now since about '68.

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

Once you get into entertaining a quarter of a million people its a very weird place to be.

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

It's nice to get a response from the artists that I cover.

I had a job when I was 16 at a gas fitter, which was a bit like a pipe fitter.

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

I would like to be able to do a song with Ray Charles, before we both get too old.

Unfortunately I was in New York when 9/11 happened.

Don't go on American Idol, I think you'll spend the rest of your life living it down and I think it's getting kinda scary, isn't it?

Well, over the years, I've developed a stable of songs of which I'm known for and never get tired of singing.

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

I have always been a sucker for ballads, but you have to be careful these days, you can't overload people.

A lot of times when you're young and carefree, you don't realize, when you tip over the edge, how difficult it is to climb back in.

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

I was in Germany when the wall came down.

I have sung to large crowds since then, and there is a feeling that once you get over 100,000 people, you kind of lose the control element, you don't know if you are really getting through or not.

Once you get into entertaining a quarter of a million people, it's a very weird place to be.

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

Europe is usually where I am usually galloping around.

A lot of times when youre young and carefree you dont realize when you tip over the edge how difficult it is to climb back in.

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?

Making music, if you're a real musician, you carry on regardless in this world.

Over the years, I've worked with just about everybody.

God, I'm just a fat bald guy, 60 years old, singing the blues, you know?

I love songs that have a rocking and grooving feeling.

Some of the songs I do once in a while that I kinda... my set list is basically like my hits, there is a good reason why they are there; people really like them.

I used to get so carried away while I was on stage that I'd be physically damaged by the end of a concert.

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