When I began, the guitar was en-closed in a vicious circle. There were no composers writing for the guitar, be-cause there were no virtuoso guitarists.
When I started to play with my fingernails, it was not just for volume. The most important thing was giving the guitar different colors in its voices.
I don't like to practice; I like spontaneity. When I don't play guitar for a week and I pick it up again, I play better.
I picked up the guitar at 11, but even before then, I was writing songs on the organ.
I kept listening, kept going to see people, kept sitting in with people, kept listening to records. If I wanted to learn somebody's stuff, like with Clapton, when I wanted to learn how he was getting some of his sounds - which were real neat - I learned how to make the sounds with my mouth and then copied that with my guitar.
I preferred not to be laden down with a big instrument. If you're behind a guitar, you get used to being behind a guitar, and you don't really perform because you can't. I wanted to be able to just hold on to the mike and sing.
When you tune your guitar in a different way, it lends itself to a new way of looking at your songwriting.
To stay a great singer or guitar player, you've got to do it 24/7. That's what I do.
I wish I had met [Francesca] Woodman forty years ago. It would have been great to live with her for a year. She didn't save anything. She played the camera like a new guitar. She murdered herself out taking pictures.
My guitar, I sing of thee 'Tis with thee that I decoy And ensnare enchantingly the ladies I enjoy.
A student might ask, how long will it take to learn guitar..., the answer is, as long as you live - that short.
But we go out as a band because we enjoy each others company, first of all. And its the payoff for me, to go out and play my art and still play guitar, which is my life.
For an electric guitarist to solo effectively on an acoustic guitar you need to develop tricks to avoid the expectation of sustain that comes from playing electrics. Try cascades, for example. Drop arpeggios over open strings, and let the open strings sing as you pick with your fingers. It's kind of a country style of playing, but it works very well in-between heavily strummed parts and fingered lead lines.
I feel my spot is somewhere between a bass player and a rhythm guitar player. I play with a pick. I play very aggressively. I always have a distortion pedal in line, and I play less melodies and do more stuff against the guitars that create melodies.
My God is rock'n'roll. It's an obscure power that can change your life. The most important part of my religion is to play guitar.
When I got my first guitar my fingers wouldn't go to the sixth string so I took off the big E and played with just five strings. I was only 6 or 7.
Then Bono arrived, and he meant to play the guitar, but he couldn't play very well, so he started to sing. He couldn't do that either. But he was such a charismatic character that he was in the band anyway, as soon as he arrived. I was in charge for the first five minutes, but as soon as Bono got there, I was out of a job.
I wasn’t thriving socially, so I stayed in my room and played guitar all the time, at the time, I thought I was inventing a new sound that would change the whole outlook of music. I’ve discovered in the last few years that it was just the Seattle Sub Pop sound.
I play guitar because I like to make loud noises. And the guitar is the coolest way to make a loud noise.
All I have is this guitar, these chords and the truth.
I Still Approach A Scene As One Would Approach A Guitar Solo. You Don't Exactly Know How You're Going To Phrase This Or That. Which I Think Is Beautiful. That Idea Of Chance.
My daddy left home when I was three and he didn't leave much to Ma and me, just this old guitar and an empty bottle of booze.
I have a lot of guitars. Yeah, I'm not like a guitar collector, I don't have all vintage instruments. I don't even own a Strat or Les Paul. I don't have one.
For me, theory has always opened things up to where I can walk into a room and just by hearing something I know exactly where to go on the guitar. I have a better time playing because I have a variety of colors to bring to the table.
I wanted to be an actor, an astrologer, an astronaut; a lot of different things were going through my mind. But I also wanted to play guitar. I mentioned to my parents that I wanted an electric guitar for Christmas. They got me one! I sat there all Christmas morning making a lot of loud horrible noise.
