I really respect Zakk Wylde's guitar playing and his compulsive work ethic.
Because people don't understand what computing is about, they think they have it in the iPhone, and that illusion is as bad as the illusion that 'Guitar Hero' is the same as a real guitar.
Sure I destroyed my guitar at every concert, but it was okay, because I'd always get a shiny new one the very next day.
I'm not going to play lead guitar in a concert hall full of people, because I'm going to mess up a lot.
I tried to connect my singing voice to my guitar an' my guitar to my singing voice. Like the two was talking to one another.
I love classical music. Yes, I was in a conservatory when I was younger and played guitar and all that stuff, so I also love rock.
My father played guitar, so I always wanted to play for that reason. But I think the biggest reason was just the '90s in general - growing up listening to the Smashing Pumpkins, Green Day and bands like that, and going to concerts and thinking it was the coolest thing in the world.
I was just a kid in 1987 when I heard of the Pixies, the year after I graduated high school. But I had my band together, and my best friend at the time, Corey Hickock, who was the guitar player in the band that would become STP, Mighty Joe Young, turned me on to the Pixies.
I just hate to be in one corner. I hate to be put as only a guitar player, or either only as a songwriter, or only as a tap dancer. I like to move around.
My grandpa was a country singer, and I started learning guitar from him, just at the kitchen table when I was younger, and I got really into it.
With seven boys and one sister, there was always a lot of music in the house. A few of my brothers were playing instruments, so it was from hearing that, coupled with discovering early rock, which triggered me to pick up a guitar and try to pick out the notes.
I'm interested in creating a little sound world for songs, really crafting it, building it, and making it like a little doll's house with little things inside it, staircases and rooms and everything kind of relates to everything else. I've never seen it as drums, bass, guitar and vocals in very separate spaces.
I actually had a really nice guitar as a teenager. I took jazz guitar, so my mom bought me this probably $1,600 guitar. But I got really into garage rock and local bands, and I noticed they played really crappy guitars. So I thought, 'Hey, I should get a crappy guitar, too!'
But when I was 12 or 13, I found the acoustic guitar and got into guitar music ultimately, like Black Motorcycle Club, obviously Neil Young, Crosby, Stills and Nash.
'Cruise Control' was the first track me and Wiz Khalifa ever did. I made the beat on that, and I played guitar on it.
Sometimes, I sit with my guitar and start playing... something or the other pops into my head... Basically, I write whatever that comes to my mind. I've written a lot of songs, but they are lying in my cupboard... I mean to do something about them someday.
I have one custom guitar which I play almost exclusively. I have others - sometimes you want a little texture, kind of a different sound or something.
I understand I'm supposed to be feminine and dainty, but I'm not. There are two sides to the coin. People are more impressed with things that I do because they almost treat you as if you're handicapped if you're a woman... people can be impressed that I can play a few chords on the guitar.
The flukey part of it is, back in the early days, I had that guitar decorated with all kinds of crap wallpaper, 'Flower Power' - then that got all shaved off. And during the course of cleaning the bass up again, some of the wood got shaved down, and it probably became a lighter body than the stock factory model.
I guess I think like deep inside, I know that it's like, it's a different kind of performing, it's not really... You're not performing like a guitar player or a singer is performing, you know what I mean? So it's weird to be in the same type setup as one of those. 'Cause I'm not really doing much, you know, like technically it's not that hard.
