All my influences go into a pot like a big ole stew, and it tastes like all the years I spent trying to play the guitar like Stevie Ray Vaughn. It tastes like Allman Brothers and Lynyrd Skynyrd. And if it comes out bluesy, then so be it.
I didn't know that you were supposed to tune the guitar to an open chord, and I learned to play slide with a normal tuning. I think it's a little more melodic that way and doesn't sound so bluesy. Of course, if I could play like David Lindley or Ry Cooder, I'd be a happy man!
I'd like to have a beer-holder on my guitar like they have on boats.
When I can focus on something like guitar or painting, I do. I started painting people I admire, like Kerouac, Bob Dylan, Nelson Algren, Marlon Brando, Patti Smith, my girl, my kids.
The thing about me is that I'm very fortunate to have had the opportunities with Avenged Sevenfold in songwriting. I really think it's helped to bolster my guitar playing as well.
There are a lot of really good guitar sounds and new kind atmospheres on the new Bon Jovi record. I think people are going to dig it, man. And it rocks hard.
Going to high school in rural Florida, we always partied down in the woods. Somebody - one of the rednecks - would leave class and mow a path out to a field, and we'd drive out there. Dude, every party I went to was lit by a bonfire. Acoustic guitar.
My approach in 1999 was basically to play what I had, that was all I could do. At the time I was broke. I think I only had one guitar, a flametop green Jackson and I had these DC-10 Mesa Boogie heads. I think I had a cheap Shure wireless.
Give me a strapless gown and a rhinestone-studded guitar and some 55-year-olds in my audience, along with their kids and grandkids. Don't give me 'boogie'!
Once in a while, the thumb that fits over the neck of the guitar kinda bothers me a little bit, but not that much yet. I figure in time I won't do much because of my age.
No one ever taught me how to shave; no one ever sat down to watch a Braves game with me. I paid for Yale myself, I lived by myself, I taught myself how to play the guitar. I did this all on my own.
I've been touching instruments since the day I was born. My mother is Brazilian, and she listens to Brazilian music. My father was a musician, and I've seen pictures of him when he was in a band playing guitar and piano. He loved country music, Frank Sinatra, and stuff like that.
When I was first getting into the guitar, I played it incessantly. I lived it, breathed it, ate it, and slept it. I was also extremely self-critical, so from early on, I made sure to develop good playing habits - I constantly strove to sound in tune and have a great tone, and to play cleanly and in time.
My favorite guitar players are Chuck Berry and Brian May and Dave Davies from the Kinks.
I mean, give me a guitar, give me a piano, give me a broom and string, I wouldn't get bored anywhere.
Give me a guitar, give me a piano, give me a broom and string; I wouldn't get bored anywhere.
I have actual dreams of Bruce Springsteen calling me up on stage to wear a bandanna and play rhythm guitar next to Little Steven.
At the point where I'm trying to force something and it's not happening, and I'm getting frustrated with, say, writing a poem, I can go and pick up the brushes and start painting. At the point where the painting seems to not be going anywhere, I go and pick up the guitar.
A guitar is a very personal extension of the person playing it. You have to be emotionally and spiritually connected to your instrument. I'm very brutal on my instruments, but not all the time.
Bryan Adams might not be what I want to put on, but he's a pop singer with a great voice and great guitar tone. Plus, he's done more for Canada than Rush have, because he works all the time. I envy him for that.
