Steve Winwood: The "Everyone" Interview

We wanted to give our readers a chance to learn about Steve Winwood from some great interviewers/interviews out there, so we figured it best to pull together various questions from various sources at various points throughout Steve's career. Know any other great interviews with Steve from any time in his career? Let us know in the comments section!

Interview magazine (April 1986):
You were being hailed as the "boy wonder," a "rock 'n roll Mozart" [during your school years]. What did that do to you?

Steve:
It can affect you a lot, but in my own defense, I'd say we were quite lucky, as it wasn't an overnight thing. We worked hard and traveled hard and built a reputation. We traveled around Europe in vans, playing small places, extraordinary gigs in places like Ireland, where you'd go down a dirt track to a church where one line of people were on one side and one line on the other, and they were two families. There were a lot of gigs like that in the early days and I think that's different now. It happens quicker.

Chicago Tribute (June 2010):
How did you get together with Clapton for the Powerhouse session in 1966?

Steve:
We were quite friendly by then. Eric’s a couple years older, and at our age now that means nothing, but when I was 16 and he was 18, 19, it was a big difference. I just moved from Birmingham to London and I lived in lodgings in the suburbs, and Eric had a wonderful bohemian flat in a cool part of the city, so I’d go and hang out with him. He took me under his wing in many respects. He introduced me to his friends, and we’d play and talk about records. The whole conversation revolved around music. When we met, he was playing with the Yardbirds and then John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers and I was in the Spencer Davis Group. In those days we’d play on the same bill a lot. If we weren’t we’d see each other traveling between the clubs we all used to play at. The Powerhouse was put together by (producer) Joe Boyd, I think it was some sort of sampler for a new label. Eric was there, and I sang. We recorded a bunch of songs in a day. In those days we would make records in a day, entire albums in a day. We’d do side one before lunch, break, and then do side two. 

GQ UK (June 2010):

Steve (on his Traffic days in the '60s):
Our music was the soundtrack of the decade, and that applies to anyone who was in a band at the time. We were just genuinely obsessed with making music, which hadn't happened before in this way. A lot of people think that the music was responsible for a lot of changes in the Sixties, but I think the music came out of it. The music wouldn't have happened without the social changes. It happened in America first. Before every son wanted to be like his father and every daughter wanted to be like her mother…but the Sixties changed all that. In the Sixties you didn't want to be like your parents at all. 

Express UK (February 2011):

Steve (on still making music):
I wouldn’t say I’m so enthusiastic about the music business itself, but I am still incredibly excited by music, I’m still learning, and it never really ceases, and I think that’s why I still have such an interest in it even though I’m now in my 60s. I still haven’t cracked it, and there is no such thing as perfection, and that’s what keeps me going. Music is my life... it’s running through my blood.

About.com Classic Rock (March 2008):

If you could go back and change anything in your career, choose one thing you could do over, is there one, and, if so, what would it be? 

Steve: 
There are two answers to that, I suppose. On the one hand, I've been very lucky and very blessed to be able to play with so many people and to play to so many people, and that I have a vocation that I really love to do, so I actually have no complaints at all. 

But then on the other hand, I suppose there can always be improvements, so I can't say that I've done everything as perfectly as it could have been done. I'm sure there are things I could have done a little better at the time. I can't think of a specific one right offhand, but as it happened, I did what I did and what I live with now is what I've done in the past and I can't complain.