My sister and I - she's a musician - we jam all the time. We always play around for giggles with stuff that seem unconventional or stuff that seems funny. A lot of the stuff sometimes is just a response from jam sessions in her room, so she'll be on the guitar or the keyboard, and we'll just start singing and doing stuff.
I didn't know until later, but my uncle was quite a famous bohemian in Glasgow, and he played guitar. My father was a kind of a poetic bohemian, and he read me poetry.
The first band I was ever in, I played guitar. We did Gary Glitter and Green Day covers at the time. We were called Fizz. I have no idea why we picked that. We were, like, 12 years old.
At my high school, there were always kids carrying acoustic guitars around, which is why I named my band the Mountain Goats. I didn't want to seem like one of those guys who brought his guitar to the party whether you asked him to or not.
I always looked up to Slash from Guns N' Roses, and I always pictured myself being a rock star and playing the guitar, just going crazy.
I have spent over 60 years bent over a guitar and to know that I wrote 70 compositions that masters have recorded, that makes me feel so good and full, and proud and thankful to the good Lord.
Reading a book about management isn't going to make you a good manager any more than a book about guitar will make you a good guitarist, but it can get you thinking about the most important concepts.
There was a guitar that my uncle owned and never learnt to play. He sold it to my dad, and when I heard 'Layla', that was the tune that really grabbed me. I said to my dad, 'Wait, there's a guitar, right?'
When I was, like, 12, I remember grabbing a mic, pretending it was a guitar, and performing in front of my friends. I didn't know at the time I wanted to be an artist.
It wasn't until I was 18, when I was graduating high school, that I went and bought a guitar on a whim.
I think being young and, like, 14, 15, you feel like a weirdo, and playing guitar with my grandpa in my grandma's kitchen is probably my fondest memories I'll ever have.
Bruce's band is so different from the Grateful Dead; there's no lead guitar player, for one thing.
To me and my band, guitar riffs are what it's all about. We know that every time we jam on a great riff, we've got a fighting chance of writing a great song!
I've known Shawn for several years. And he's just an amazing talent. He's a great writer, a marvelous, marvelous guitar player, and plays really good fiddle.
I was pretty much into punk rock and that's all I cared about. I was into Green Day and the Ramones. I wanted to get a guitar so I could play punk songs because this kid taught me power chords at summer camp.
So I played the acoustic guitar and harmonica and stomped my foot and I think I was right in assuming that Greenwich Village would be the best place to perform my own material and possibly get some attention, move on to making records and all.
A lot of people said to me, 'Enough with the guest vocalists for a while. We want to hear the Mexican play the guitar!'
I play a little guitar, write a few tunes, make a few movies, but none of that's really me. The real me is something else.
I was probably 7 years old when I started playing the guitar and writing some serious songs.
Sometimes you want to give up the guitar, you'll hate the guitar. But if you stick with it, you're gonna be rewarded.
