I never had a setlist. Not once. Not one time in fifty years of playing did I write down the order of songs on a piece of paper and tape it to the ground. The ground was the stage and the stage did not have a setlist because the setlist was whatever came out of my mouth when I opened it.

A setlist is a promise. The band promises to play these songs in this order for this many minutes and then stop. That is a setlist. It is a contract between the band and the audience and the venue and the clock. I had no contract. I had no venue. I had no clock. I had a corner and a guitar and whatever the corner gave me and the corner gave me everything.

The best musicians in the world use setlists. They rehearse the setlist. They time the setlist. They light the setlist. Every song has a cue and every cue has a moment and every moment has been planned six months in advance by a team of people who are paid to make sure nothing unexpected happens. Nothing unexpected. That is the goal. Remove the unexpected from the music and deliver a product that is identical every night in every city. That is a setlist. It is a factory schedule for feelings.

I played what the crowd needed. If they were angry I played angry. If they were stoned I played stoned. If a cop showed up I played about cops. If a dog walked by I played about dogs. The setlist was the street and the street changed every thirty seconds so the setlist changed every thirty seconds and that is why no two shows were the same and that is why every show was alive.

The setlist killed improvisation. The setlist killed the accident. The best moments in music are accidents. Somebody plays the wrong chord and the song goes somewhere new and the audience hears something that has never existed before and will never exist again. That is music. That is what music is supposed to be. A setlist prevents that. A setlist says no accidents allowed. A setlist is a leash on a song.

I am dead and I still do not have a setlist. These rants come out in whatever order they come out. Nobody planned this. Nobody wrote the order on a piece of paper. The order is the order of the street. The street decides. The street always decided. And the street never once asked for a setlist.