I only saw him play live once, and it was disappointingly shambolic, probably because of drink or drugs, though some of us knew he was capable of so much more. However, the rest of the audience were very unimpressed and wondered what we ever saw in him.
I think he resented being a bit of a one hit wonder, with many in the audience calling out to him to play Anji, when clearly he wanted to play more adventurous and arguably more challenging pieces. Looking back, he was ahead of his time playing world music in unusual time signatures and open tunings, when most of us were still locked into standard tuning and common time.