"So, I started playing when I was eleven. I wasn't really dilligent about practicing. I was more interested in the physical sensation of playing and the fact that music had the ability to transport you. It was a way to get you to another level of conciousness. I never would have used this language at the time, but in retrospect that's what really going on. It got me on a level of conciousness that was certainly more expansive than the rigid kind of environment I grew up in. I think that the liberating aspect of music is what I really identified with and what pulled me along in the direction of becoming a musican, because I certainly wasn't encouraged as a kid.
As I gradually became more and more interested in really becoming a musican - other thing seemed to fade into the background. In some ways I did kind of resist it, and my parents actually tried to discourage me, some of it out of genuine concern. You know 'How are you going to make a living - playing the saxophone? Are you going to live on the road in the bus?' Well at that time it seemed like the greatest idea. It's funny - I never did do that.
I don't see the terrible aspects of being a musican when you're a kid. It's all glamorous. For me, it was a way to meet girls, get some self-esteem. But more than anything, it was a way to tap parts of yourself that surprise even you.
I ended up sitting in with Albert King and Little Milton and a couple of jazz groups in town. It was exciting, new and different, but more important than anything else was the fact that the music was so vital: there was so much life there. That was what made me feel really alive - as opposed to the kind of normal, murky adolescent time of my high school days."