A lot of people [in the U.S.] used to say punk really didn't change anything, but I think it did. It was an intangible thing, not a visible thing. It took us through to a new phase of music and a way of seeing things.

If you want to be a virtuoso then you have to set your sights above me. You have to go beyond what I'm doing. And that's for you to figure out. Because if you can do that, then I'm going to be trying to go beyond you.

Some of us can be examples about going ahead and growing, and some of us, unfortunately, don't make it there, and end up being examples because they had to die. I hit rock bottom, but thank God my bottom wasn't death.

As long as your intention is pure, and you know what you're in it for, then you're alright. And I'm in it because I enjoy it. I take it seriously... real seriously. I mean I could sit and talk all day about the music.

Working on a play is a vibrant and collaborative business. Everyone from the choreographer to the music director to the director to the writers work together toward the same goal, and everyone chimes in on everything.

I don't work with anybody on the music, of course. But my God, some of the lyrics that other people have written were so shallow: 'Hey baby this, hey baby that.' I need substance to the words, you know? Give me depth!

There was some conflict there over Saturday nights because we were all really broke in those days- all the money you had in the world was in your pockets. Nowadays when you're say you're broke, it's not the same thing.

I refuse to stand up in front of a rabbi and my friends and the woman I love - who I will tell you I can love with all my heart - and promise she will be the only one I will ever have until the day I die. That's a lie.

Ethnic music the world 'round is quite fascinating," "There are an enormous number of similarities there, and it's the similarities that are so appealing. ... I haven't even scratched the surface of that kind of thing.

People that work in a business are likely to date somebody that is in the same business. If you are a doctor, you might go out with one of the nurses. Or if you're a bank teller, you may go out with one of the bankers.

I've seen people around me write books, and somehow they're always in the center of everything that happened; they were the one who made it happen. There's been a lot of those books that didn't really interest me much.

...I think of improvising as composing - fo me it's all about playing melodies. When I improvise, there's not a lot of real thinking going on, per se - it's more like riding a wave. and I know how to stand on the board

I was doing our first album when I was 19. It came out as a hit, and I blinked - then 37 years went by. There's a lot of stuff that happened in there, but once the snowball started going down the hill, I took the ride.

There aren't that many people that cover my music. It's kind of hard to cover. Everybody always has their own spin. The only guy who didn't, I think, was Seal. It just sounded like a bad version of 'Fly Like an Eagle.'

I'm uptight in general, and it's hard for me to play in a situation where I'm not rehearsed or I feel like I'm not prepared. So it's always hard for me to come away from those and think it was the best thing I could do.

,,, all around it would have to be Eddie Cochran, because it wasn't just music with him; it was his guitar playing, his look, his singing, I'd say that, all things considered, he's probably my favorite "cat" of all time

My models for graceful aging are guys like John Lee Hooker and Mississippi John Hurt, who never stopped working till they dropped, as I fully expect to be doing, and just getting better as musicians and as human beings.

Bobby is really the one who did all the editing on that stuff. And he did all the mixing. I particularly like the record we did with Logic because Scott Harding did a great job mixing it. He's really a killing engineer.

The first thing I heard was spiritual music, which was imbedded. The second thing I heard was swing. And shortly, along with that, I began to hear the blues. And then I began to hear Latin music. Each one left its mark.

I love being alive and I will be the best man I possibly can. I will take love wherever I find it and offer it to everyone who will take it. . . seek knowledge from those wiser and teach those who wish to learn from me.

People from major labels were afraid to go to Black Flag gigs throughout most of the bands existence. They treated our gigs as something threatening. Im sure that it probably was. They probably had reasons to be scared.

I'm definitely a fan of dance music. I guess we really call it 'dance' music because music seems to have become very functional. For years, people were trying to be everything. Now, musicians are becoming very specific.

The Rock'n'Blues Fest is my kind of festival series! It's always great playing shows with my brother and, add to that, all the other great artists and their bands and this should make for one historic round of concerts.

I live in L.A., and whenever I get together with anybody to write, everybody is obsessed and fearful and wants to write a hit for everyone else. They wanna write a hit for Rihanna; they wanna write a hit for Katy Perry.

A Kiss concert experience is like sex or anything else that's done with more that one person. It's the give and take that makes it so great. When the audience takes it to the next level, we can kick it up another notch.

Every other guitar player was just copying other guitarists. From the time I was 13 up until 18, I practiced at least eight hours a day, every day. My health suffered for it - I was losing sleep and not eating properly.

If you listen to everybody's opinions, I mean, I always say I'd be digging a ditch on the side of the road now if I had listened to what everybody told me what to do. You know, you have to follow your heart, you have to.

Maybe its a case of one guitar feeling a certain way to the hands that makes one subsequently move differently over the strings, but my intent is always to wring the maximum emotional resonance out of the object in hand.

It'll be basically a live album, but it will also include songs, Judas Priest songs, the audience have never heard before, because we felt we wanted to give the kids something else, something they haven't already bought.

When I got sober and started working out, I fell into that trap of working out too much. I know a lot of guys can relate to that - if you don't get that runner's high every day, you feel like, 'Oh my God, I'm losing it.'

Hearing Jimi Hendrix as a little kid and falling in love with everything that he did on guitar rewired my basic nature. To me, that was a normal thing that you should do: you should strive to be as innovative as Hendrix.

I'm pretty sure I was about the only kid in school who knew who Jimi Hendrix even was. Through my older siblings, I was getting turned on to all the great music that was happening at the time, and I really loved Hendrix.

Classical musicians do this all the time. They want perfection. So they piece things together. Eight bars of this and six bars of that. Glenn Gould said that with a recording he wanted to make perfect versions of pieces.

You can have the greatest player in terms of mastering an instrument and you could be yawning your head off when you hear them. So, it's not what you do, but the way you're doing it and in the end that's all that we have

Well, Smoke n' Mirrors has very much a world music flavor and it doesn't park itself in one country. It borrows heavily from the Brazilian angle, which is dear to my heart, and I recorded several albums with that flavor.

Bob Erlendson, a local piano player, taught me chord structure and which scales go along with them. Later, I began listening to [pianists] Bill Evans and McCoy Tyner. Then I got interested in [saxophonist] John Coltrane.

... it took me five years of going right into the mouth of the lion to learn to be at ease onstage ... if you deal with an audience as a bunch of people having a great time, you'll have a much bettrer time as a performer

Vinyl's like a really juicy steak compared to like a kind of tough steak or something. It's really good. And once you listen to vinyl and get a chance to hear it, I think anyone will enjoy it more than they will digital.

What draws people to the instrument is the love for guitar players that play a certain way. I mean, even though it wasn't intentional, it was hard to avoid copying Eddie Van Halen. He was basically the *bleep* back then.

I remember my first moment onstage was at a 4-H contest at the Pratville Junior High School cafeteria auditorium around 1965. I had my first electric, a Silvertone with the amp built into the case, and I won first prize.

I need to do a concert to celebrate David Bowie's electronic music. And in so doing, I'm not taking a step back, I'm taking a step forward and presenting it in its entirety so people can understand this type of visionary.

That's the thing that we said about the horn before: it's a focus issue. It's like a singer versus a drummer. If a drummer's playing a drum beat, and a singer starts singing, what do you think the audience is going to do?

People from major labels were afraid to go to Black Flag gigs throughout most of the band's existence. They treated our gigs as something threatening. I'm sure that it probably was. They probably had reasons to be scared.

I'm concentrating on staying healthy, having peace, being happy, remembering what is important, taking in nature and animals, spending time reading, trying to understand the universe, where science and the spiritual meet.

You can have the greatest player in terms of mastering an instrument and you could be yawning your head off when you hear them. So, it's not what you do, but the way you're doing it and in the end that's all that we have.

If I had unlimited funds, wall space and storage, I would collect a lot more things, like 'Planet of the Apes,' 'Star Wars,' science fiction stuff, autographs, and prop guns and weapons. I have to draw the line somewhere.

People ask me to describe how I play, and the most obvious answer is that I'm a jazz influenced guitar player. But I'm not a jazz guitar player. Wes Montgomery was a jazz guitarist, Joe Pass was a jazz guitarist (laughs).

How different South Africa’s cricketing achievements, and indeed the future of the country itself, might have been if racism had not denied Frank Roro the opportunity of batting with Bruce Mitchell in the Lord’s sunshine.

That got me thinking. Bon Jovi kills in Jersey. Just kills. We did Atlantic City this past winter and man, you wouldn't believe the intensity in that crowd. Can I just talk for a minute about how amazingly hot Heather is?

I don't feel any kind of a responsibility (other than to myself) to write "weighty" lyrics. In fact I sometimes wish I could learn to write in a simpler form, to be more direct and I'm going to be experimenting with this.

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