I see a young man playing 'Plaisir d'Amour' on guitar. I knew I didn't want to go to college; I was already playing a ukulele, and after I saw that, I was hooked. All I wanted to do was play guitar and sing.
Guitar Center hooks me up on a lot of stuff.
I always liked the double cutaway. It looked like two horns. It's like a red devil. So I went to the guitar shop, saw an SG that was sitting there looking rather lonely, and said, 'Hey, that's for me.'
I will keep a Bible or Koran on me at all times - the Bible I can actually carry on my phone, and any hotel you go to has a Bible, but the Koran is harder. I keep a physical Koran in my guitar case and put it on the table in hotel rooms so after a day's work, I can read a few verses.
I'm like a bad musical cliche because I bring my guitar on the road and try to write songs in hotel rooms.
I'm not a household name; I'm just a household name to guitar freaks.
It was my love for the guitar that first got me into music and singing. Growing up, I was inspired by The Beatles and Bob Dylan. Damian Rice was a huge influence for me musically.
I wanted to connect my guitar to human emotions.
A guitar being played by an actual person is never going to be as precise and perfect as a programmed synthesizer. But we maintain there is value in the potential for human error.
But that guitar is the perfect companion to the human voice. You rest it against your gut, against your heart, and when you strum it the vibrations go outwards for all to hear, but the vibration also hits you on your body.
The cello is such a versatile instrument. It can rock like the hardest rock guitar, and it can sing like the human voice. We couldn't do what we do without the classical training. It's a hard instrument to play. There are no frets, and it takes finesse and technique to play.
The first record I bought was a Carl Perkins record, because I saw him at The Festival at Sandpoint, Idaho. I loved Elvis and I found out that he wrote 'Blue Suede Shoes'... so connecting that experience of going to see him play was pretty awesome. That's when I realised I wanted to play guitar.
People started to ask me, 'Do you really play guitar?' They thought it was a prop. It was just interesting, because of all the imaging stuff.
John Fahey, thought during his lifetime to be possibly more than a little crazy, was the author of some thirty albums of gnomically introverted droning guitar instrumentals, which I listened to heavily in my teens and twenties; I even produced an hour or so of banjo music in an imitative John Fahey style.
Heaven to me is percussion and bass, a screaming guitar and a burbling Hammond B-3 organ. It's a soup I love being immersed in.
I'm singing what I want to sing based on the emotion of what that day feels like. That's what comes out of my mouth and guitar. That impacts people. They know anything can happen.
There's a sound with Motley Crue, and it comes with Vince's voice, which is such an important part of the show, and Mick's guitar. And the way Tommy and me play together is an important part of it.
Sometimes I'll write without the guitar or the piano, but most of the time I'll be playing and just improvising some words. And when I get something that sounds good, a line with a story in it, I'll try and tease it out and figure out where the story is going.
The first album I ever bought was Santana's 'Abraxas.' Obviously, I was a huge fan of Carlos because he had the unique guitar sound, and he had incorporated a lot of the percussion and really, really fun rhythmic bass lines in there, too.
I do music because I can just pick up my guitar and sing, and completely satisfy, instant gratification. I don't need a script, I don't people, I don't need anything, cameras, I just have myself and my guitar, or keyboard.
