There's so much to be said for making your guitar sound like a synthesizer and try to make your drummer sound like a drum machine.
If something is too hard to do, then it's not worth doing. You just stick that guitar in the closet next to your shortwave radio, your karate outfit and your unicycle and we'll go inside and watch TV.
Ben was more improvisational, and relied less on methodology, and basically is a guitarist who switched to bass, whereas Jeff has a more traditional approach to playing bass in a band, and has a great sense of what his band sounds like, and we lock up nicely.
When I write a song, I always start on acoustic guitar, because that's a good test of a song, when it's really open and bare. You can often mislead yourself if you start with computers and samples and programming because you can disguise a bad song.
I'm a boxing junkie, a serial-killer junkie, and a classical guitar junkie. All of these guys are great, poetic references.
I didn't know that people compared Bill Hicks and I but certainly I'm flattered if they do. I knew Bill a bit. We had dinner a couple of times and played guitar together once. I really tried to keep my distance from him professionally.
There's people that say “It's not fair You have all that stuff.” I wasn't born with it. It was a horrible process to get to this. It took me my whole life. If you're new at this- and by “new at it.” I mean 15 years in, or even 20- you're just starting to grow traction. Young musicians believe they should be able to throw a band together and be famous, and anything that's in their way is unfair and evil. What are you, in your 20s, you picked up a guitar? Give it a minute.
Now they have banging guitar and no bass and call it rock, but that's not what I call rock.
I did play every little note on the guitar on that record
Being a female hard rocker and guitar player, I felt the need to put out a memoir. Almost like a rock 'n' roll women manual for women.
I can't draw. But I can draw with sound. That's the most useful thing I learned in terms of what my craft is... The arrangements were mine. They were little lines and stuff that I had written myself... And I was locked into this idea that vocals didn't count, melodies didn't count, songwriting craftsmanship didn't count. The only thing that counted was high arching guitar solos...
Of the whole bunch of guys who play hollow body guitar, I think Herb Ellis has the most drive
And I had not much of a voice. I didn't play that great guitar either.
We used to play music for fun. Much more than now. Now nobody picks up a guitar unless they're paid for it.
Musically, I am still hooked and just hypnotized by the sound of the guitar itself. I mean, a guitar sounds good if you drop it on the floor.
If you go to Japan, they're still buying vinyl, and they want the education. They know who's playing on what tracks from the '60s and the '70s - who the guitar player is, who the drummer is, who the producer was, what studio it was recorded in. That's how I grew up listening to music. We bought albums. We read the liner notes. It was important to know the whole history behind it.
Ampeg made incredible guitar heads in the early Nineties and then stopped. And I don't know why. The one we used had a nice clean, warm sound, and it blended well with the other amps that were in the studio.
I play piano and guitar. Acoustic guitar. I tried studying classical guitar when I was 16 but it got really hard. I could never play a lead to save my life.
I love collecting guitars, even though I can't play well. My favourite guitarists are Richie Blackmore, Jimmy Paige, and John Mayer.
When I was a teenager, I learned that in order to play guitar like Johnny Ramone, it takes a huge amount of physical effort.
James Brown is the reason I play guitar.
One guy can ruin an instrument. Jimi Hendrix, bless his heart - how I wish he was still around - almost inadvertently ruined guitar. Because he was the only cat who could do it like that. Everybody else just screwed it up, and thought wailing away (on the guitar) is the answer. But it ain't; you've got to be a Jimi to do that, you've got to be one of the special cats.
I like loud snare, and I like really treble-y guitars, and that's just never going to change.
I used to go and do some sitting in with Robert Nighthawk when he were playing at the 708 Club in Chicago. He was a tremendous slideman. I never saw him do anything other than play the slide. I never just saw him just use his hand. He always used a slide. He had a little-bitty drummer we called "Shorty". He was about that high [hand gesture]. And he was his drummer. That's all he had was a slide guitar and a drummer.
My first guitar was a Gibson Challenger.
