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" Originally published in the January 2008 issue One of the most beneficial things I&amp;#039;ve ever learned is how to keep my mouth shut. Up until I became a father, it was all about self-obsession. But then I learned exactly what it&amp;#039;s all about: the delight of being a servant. Olivier wrote that the greatest thing you could aspire to in life was to be a good servant. From the beginning, I knew intuitively that if nothing else, music was safe, and that nobody could tell me anything about it. Music didn&amp;#039;t need a middleman, whereas all the other things in school needed some kind of explanation. I don&amp;#039;t put something on tape until I&amp;#039;ve played around with it for a couple of weeks. I heard someone else say this -- it may have been Quincy Jones. That he gets an idea, but he doesn&amp;#039;t really act on it unless it keeps coming back and starts to annoy him. I&amp;#039;d bought Jimi Hendrix a guitar -- this white left-handed Stratocaster. The following day, I learned that Jimi was dead, that he&amp;#039;d passed out after getting stoned on a mixture of booze and drugs, and choked on his own vomit. Why didn&amp;#039;t that stop me? Well, I can only say that it was arrogance. Arrogance in that I believed that I was going to be all right. I guess I was behaving like some sort of pseudoartist, you know, exploring the dark side. It must have been risky business for the people who tried to stop me. Upon reflection, I can see all the care and love that it took to come talk to me during the period when I was underground. I can see how fucking careless and callous I was to slap them all in the face by not listening. Addiction doesn&amp;#039;t negotiate.  It was the fishing rod that told me I had hit rock bottom. Everyone says I&amp;#039;m in a fix. Am I in a fix? I don&amp;#039;t know, am I? I don&amp;#039;t feel like I&amp;#039;m in a fix. How do I get out of the fix I&amp;#039;m in? I&amp;#039;ll go fishing. I had always thought of myself as a good fisherman. I drove to the River Wey and found a spot. I had just managed to get my gear set up when I lost my balance, fell over onto one of my rods, and broke it. I could no longer even fish. Bang, I was at rock bottom. You are not a fisherman, mister. Wake up. Well, what am I? I&amp;#039;m an alcoholic, actually. Up until the point when I went into treatment, I&amp;#039;d never asked for help from anybody. I would rather not have known the answer than have to ask you for help. That&amp;#039;s why treatment was fascinating for me. They deliberately put in your path as many things as they could that required you to ask someone else how it&amp;#039;s done. Making a cup of coffee: There&amp;#039;s a machine over there with all these components that you&amp;#039;ve got to put together to make a cup of coffee, and I just didn&amp;#039;t know how. So I had to ask someone. Over and over, I had to ask for help. Very clever. Risk is trying to control something you are powerless over. People who tend to go after money as a solution for whatever they feel they lack had better be careful what they pray for, because they just may get it. I&amp;#039;m a good one for sampling on iTunes. I know pretty quickly if I should buy. &amp;quot;Layla&amp;quot; was like striking gold. There&amp;#039;s that thing about when you&amp;#039;re looking in the water and the sand and suddenly you see the sparkle. It&amp;#039;s never, for me anyway, &amp;quot;Oh, people will like this.&amp;quot; It&amp;#039;s, &amp;quot;This is the mother lode here!&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Tears in Heaven&amp;quot; is a tricky one because I can&amp;#039;t play that anymore. It would be inappropriate to use the memory of my son or what I felt at that time to gain any kind of influence with the audience. I have regrets, obviously. Countless. One of the great regrets was getting involved with George Harrison&amp;#039;s marriage. What is that fabulous song that Dylan plays? &amp;quot;Don&amp;#039;t go mistaking paradise for that home across the road.&amp;quot; I don&amp;#039;t know what inspired that song, but my experience is exactly what it&amp;#039;s about. Steve Winwood, a friend of mine, said that he teaches his kids that if they&amp;#039;re not early, they&amp;#039;re late. There&amp;#039;s no in-between. My identity shifted when I got into recovery. That&amp;#039;s who I am now, and it actually gives me greater pleasure to have that identity than to be a musician or anything else, because it keeps me in a manageable size. When I&amp;#039;m down on the ground with my disease -- which I&amp;#039;m happy to have -- it gets me in tune. It gives me a spiritual anchor. Don&amp;#039;t ask me to explain. The toughest thing about being a celebrity, I suppose, is being polite when I don&amp;#039;t want to be. And I don&amp;#039;t like having my picture taken. I&amp;#039;m almost like an old African in that sense. I think it steals a bit of the soul. My definition of peace is having no noise in my head. Interviewed on October 9, 2007 "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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