Andres Segovia, the great name for guitar, he put classical guitar on the map. He was the proponent of it, the best in the world. So I was listening to a record that he had made, and a little bauble happened in the middle of the record. A finger slipped, and I said, 'Wait a minute. He's not allowed to make mistakes,' - my mind.
I studied classical guitar in school, and that type of stuff has led to writing for Kronos.
My background in music is classical - I did graduate school in music. At that time, I was studying composition, but I was studying classical guitar very seriously.
If you learn classical guitar, you play Bach, and then John Dowland. He's the greatest. He's interesting for many, many reasons.
I learned classical guitar as a kid at about 7 or 8 years old. When I was about 14, I started dabbling in songwriting. That's when I got into the folky singer-songwriter style.
There was a period when I'd just come out of college where I'd been playing classical guitar and I suddenly realised that it wasn't what I wanted to do with the rest of my life.
I play piano and trumpet. I studied classical guitar.
I like the bad-boy types. Generally the guy I'm attracted to is the guy in the club with all the tattoos and nail polish. He's usually the lead singer in a punk band and plays guitar. But my serious boyfriends are relatively clean-cut, nice guys. So it's strange.
The concept of clearing one's mind before performing a task so that it is consumed by nothing but that task, yet is open at the same time to anything that might happen - that concept can be applied to playing guitar, and it's enormously helpful for improvising.
I look for things that are left of center, something you've only seen your whole life, but never heard. Hit it! With a stick! I have a guitar made out of a 2x4 that I bought in Cleveland.
If we are going to list guitar influences, the biggest one by far is Wes Montgomery. Also, Gary Burton was obviously huge for me in a number of ways. But beyond that, Clifford Brown, Miles Davis and Freddie Hubbard.
However you feel about Dimebag, this is one of the most influential metal guitar players of the '90s. I was just talking to someone that I am hiring to bring on the tour who said that, when he was at the funeral, that Eddie Van Halen came and put his striped guitar in the coffin. That's a pretty big deal.
I had a guitar when I was 6 or 7, a plastic guitar with the Beatles' faces on it. It would be a collector's item now. It would fetch a hefty sum, I imagine.
I played a lot of keyboards, but I really wanted to produce the sound that was in my head that I was trying to emulate on the keys. I wanted to do it for real. And it makes me look at the keys in a different way. So it's like I'm looking at the guitar and bass more like meat and potatoes and keys like coloring over top of it, you know.
I lived deep in the country in northern Wisconsin. I didn't have any neighbors or anything, so in the summers, I played guitar for hours and hours every day until I was about 18. I never thought about combining it with drag, 'cause to me, well, drag queens don't play guitar. Now I'm like, 'You idiot, that's an opportunity.'
Out of drag, I'm a white guy with a guitar, which isn't special. There are a million white guys with guitars. But being a drag queen with a guitar is a lot more commanding.
Describing certain sounds, there's a common language that guitar players have.
I knew I was a good singer - I've been singing my whole life, so I was comfortable enough with that - I felt like I could compensate with not being great on guitar.
I feel really fortunate that, in playing guitar and surfing, I've found two things that mean so much to me, and which really complement each other. There's definitely a spiritual thing to both of them; they totally connect you to a higher realm.
On 'Metallica,' I recorded six or seven different guitar solos for almost every song, took the best aspects of each solo, mapped out a master solo and made a composite. Then I learned how to play the composite solo, tightened it up and replayed it for the final version.
