A horn has that voice quality, and an electric guitar can emulate that. But playing an acoustic, the notes don't sustain like that.
I had a guitar sitting around, and it just happened to have four strings on it, and I would sit around watching TV and playing it. I ended up writing bunches of songs around four strings.
Anyone who can do the splits and come back up on the backbeat, as James Brown and Prince can, has my eternal respect. Prince, who is a genius of the highest order, can come back up while singing and playing the guitar.
I tend to prefer the band thing. I think playing solo is good for about 45 minutes. I remember when I was on my solo tour that I got a chance to play with Martin Stephenson of the Daintees. He's now refashioned himself as almost a delta blues guitar player and he's got all the technique, all the persona and the charisma on stage. I think I do too, but I'm more of a first position strummer guy with a little bit of filigree work. I could listen to him for hours; I could listen to myself playing solo for about half an hour!
Among the guitarists, Wes Montgomery is fantastic. He's always good to let you know what the art form is all about. It's the same still life that everybody is painting, but in comes Wes Montgomery, and it's right there!
I don't read music; I taught myself guitar.
It's like I'll sit down and put my hands on the piano or the guitar, and then I'll hear a sound or I'll feel a chord that will resonate and then I'll get something happening in my voice. My voice is like a car that I get into and drive but I don't know where I'm going. And I record everything. And often, I sort of get into a state, a creative state that is, where I'm just feeling around melodically, and playing things off the top of my head. Then I go back and listen to it and for the first time, hear what I just did. It's like Elvis has left the building while the thing is happening.
I may make light of being a domestic terrorist, but if they can brand me a domestic terrorist and confiscate all my materials, and then expand into confiscating other people's materials, and then go after Gibson Guitars and so many other different people... they can go after you, they can go after everybody, we could all be "terrorists." That's really the big concern.
I was just a music lover who wondered what it would sound like if Otis Redding strapped on a guitar and played in a punk band. Thats it.
EverTune is, without a doubt, the most important advance in guitar playing since the electric tuner. Using the EverTune, both onstage and in the studio, has completely changed the game. It's almost impossible to explain how amazing this innovation is. Pure magic!
I just rediscovered my guitar.
Yeah. I'm amateurish. I can play enough to write a song, or strum on a little guitar to write out a song. But, I don't play well at all. I wouldn't even attempt for a second to play in public.
I first heard the banjo on the Beverly Hillbillies, and from then on I was banjo-conscious. But I didn't actually get one until my grandfather gave me one, almost by mistake. He knew I was playing a little bit of guitar. He saw a banjo at a flea market and bought it. I took it home with me and just never put it down. I was fifteen.
I remember you would record a guitar part, and we would have to sit there for 15 or 20 minutes waiting for the computer to process it. You'd see the little wheel spinning on the computer, and you'd be praying that the hard drive didn't crash and you didn't lose the performance.
Technology was something I avoided when I started out - I didn't even have electric guitars. Only played acoustic.
The early years when I was starting, blues player, you wasn't always welcome in a lot of the other places. People usually have preconceived ideas about blues music. They always feel that it's depressing and that it's just something that a guy sit out on a stool, grab a guitar, and just start singing or mumbling or whatever.
My dad bought me a guitar when I was very young, and I never looked back.
I use music as therapy. Whenever I'm feeling angry or needing some 'me' time, which is quite regularly, I'll go and bang a piano or flesh out something on a guitar.
It's about the time I was riding my Motorcycle, going down a mountain road at 150 miles an hour, playing my guitar.
Cooking is work that is traditionally done by working-class people. The work itself is not glamorous. It's repetitive, and it's a lot closer to factory work than art, whatever level you're doing it at. Certainly chefs are used to living like rock 'n' rollers to some extent, inasmuch as we get a lot of those fringe benefits without having to learn how to play guitar.
I wouldn't want to compare myself to David Byrne whom I consider a genius, but what I think what we have in common is that he's also a guy who is very interested in the world and who has a lot of passions beyond singing and playing guitar.
I'm first and foremost a guitar player. I've been playing since I was 12, which is over half of my life. I like the physicality of it; you can strangle it or make it sing. I wouldn't say I'm a very technical player, though. I'm more intuitive - it's always more about chasing an abstraction.
The schematics are a little bit tricky, but once you get it down you're able to really program an entire show. Every song has a lot of different guitar sounds in it, so that's what it is.
I'm first and foremost a guitar player. I've been playing since I was 12, which is over half of my life.
I wouldn't say I'm a very technical [guitar] player. I'm more intuitive - it's always more about chasing an abstraction.
