I don't like guitar solos that are like, 'Look at me, look at me!' I like guitar solos that are little songs within the songs.
Guitar solos bore the hell out of me. Only a few guitarists interest me, and it's not about the solos they play, it's about the grooves they create.
Jimi Hendrix came from the blues, like me. We understood each other right away because of that. He was a great blues guitarist.
Got two kids; one's a record producer who lives just up the road from me - great guitarist and piano player, too.
I think people must wonder how a white girl like me became a blues guitarist. The truth is, I never intended to do this for a living.
Pete Townshend is one of my greatest influences. More than any other guitarist, he taught me how to play rhythm guitar and demonstrated its importance, particularly in a three-piece band.
And if I would have taken lessons I probably wouldn't have done it, and what forced me to do all this weird stuff on the guitar was I couldn't afford effects pedals, I didn't have all this stuff when I was a kid so I just tried to squeeze all the weird noises I could out of the guitar, which brings me to building guitars.
When I wrote 'Help Me Make It Through the Night,' I was on an oil platform out in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico and was just thinking of myself.
If I sit down to write a joke about, whatever, the polluted Gulf of Mexico, it comes out mundane to me.
Now you can get artisanal everything - pickles, coffees, house-cured meats, mustard. The pendulum has swung back to this kind of food, and it gives me the greatest hope for the future, especially because we're living in a time with issues like polluted Gulf Coast seafood and food labeled organic that may not really be organic.
During the Gulf War, I remember two little third grade girls saying to me - after I read them some poems by writers in Iraq - 'You know, we never thought about there being children in Iraq before.' And I thought, 'Well those poems did their job, because now they'll think about everything a little bit differently.'
I'm so gullible. I'm so damn gullible. And I am so sick of me being gullible.
I remember times when I was at shows and the person onstage locked eyes with me. And in that moment, everything was right with the world. I think that's part of my job, to create these thousands of moments every night. And for the rest of their life, they can say, 'You guys looked at me,' or 'You sweated on me,' or 'I got your gum.'
I always have Trident gum with me because I talk to people all the time.
The most validating thing was when my picture was on my first bubble gum card. That was in '68 for me. I was finally on the Topps card.
You can pass all the gun legislation you want. None of it will make me feel any more or less safe than I do right at this moment.
For years, I've gone on television and made the case for the Second Amendment - the right to bear arms. I've pointed out that criminals don't follow gun laws, and I've defended the NRA and its members - law-abiding gun owners like me who have nothing to do with mass shootings or violent gun crimes.
Let me share some facts with you about the law in most of our country. California is in many ways a little different from the rest of the world, and California has better gun laws than many states, although California's need to be improved.
When I was young, the constraints of Chinese society and my personal timid and cautious nature both drove me to seek a means to go against control. Gunpowder has an inherent uncertainty and uncontrollability and is an important means for me to relieve myself of constraint.
Nelson Mandela is, for me, the single statesman in the world. The single statesman, in that literal sense, who is not solving all his problems with guns. It's truly unbelievable.
