Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I started doing up-and-down strumming, basically to keep time and to play fast. As time went on, I started realizing other guitar players couldn't do it. I always went against the grain.
I know in my heart of hearts that Ritchie Blackmore is one of the great guitar players of all time. He's a fabulous technician, and he's got incredible skills, and he was a great showman.
There's quite a few people who said they couldn't play with two drummers, and I don't understand it. It's no different than playing with two guitar players, two trumpets, or two anythings.
Buffalo Springfield had three guitar players, and we thought they were so cool. So we started doing the three-guitar thing, and people started calling us the 'guitar army' and all this stuff.
I go online, and I love watching heavy metal bands and guitar players play heavy metal versions of the 'Zelda' theme, and people do all the 'Zelda' music, which is one of my favorite soundtracks.
I mean, no offense, but I don't really see why, like guitar players from Creed, or something like that, are on the cover of guitar magazines. Almost anybody can sit down and learn to play those songs.
I don't really find it to be a man-dominated industry. I mean, I guess when you look at it, it is, but I don't really look at it as a female or male thing, or female or male guitar players or whatever.
There are two types of session guitar players. One reads and only plays what the 'dots' say. The other adds that something special and plays notes and solos you dream of. Big Jim Sullivan was such a player.
I put together the idea for G3 because I felt isolated. The success of being a 'guitar hero' kept me away from all my friends who were guitar players. I thought it would be a lot more fun to play with them.
So it's more the musician in me that makes me stretch out and try different things more than anything. But, like a lot of guitar players, I have one certain niche that's my thing that I'm better at than the others.
I didn't start to collect records and listen to guitar players properly until I went to art school, when I'd already been playing for five years. So my style was already formed, and that's why I think it's so unique.
I tried the guitar, but it had two strings too many. It was just too complicated, man! Plus, I grew up with Steve Cropper. There were so many good guitar players, another one wasn't needed. What was needed was a bass.
There have never been a lot of female guitarists out there, so most of my influences were male. Acoustically, I followed Joni Mitchell and Paul Simon. Also, John Lennon and Paul McCartney - both incredible acoustic guitar players.
I spend a lot of time copying saxophone players and trumpet players. Not to say that it is not important to listen to guitar players, but there's so much music out there and so many possibilities. I like anyone who plays any instrument.
What I do is, I look at rock guitar players, and I say to myself, 'What is this guy doing? What does he have that can inspire me?' I try to see what other people are doing and take what they have and turn it and twist it into my own thing.
Like my best friend, I asked for drums for Christmas, and got them. But when he moved on to guitar, I realized two things: (1) guitar is a much more expressive instrument, (2) way more girls pay attention to guitar players than to drummers.
I think of guitar players in terms of doctors: you have the doctor for your heart, the cardiologist, then one that works on your feet, your leg. But I believe George Benson is the one that plays all over. To me, he would be the M.D. of them all.
I listen to other guitar players, yeah. It gives me new concepts and shows me where the instrument is going for the future and it is going some places. There are some musicians who are really putting out a good vibe with new theories. I try and keep up.
I tried to emulate my favourite guitar players, the old bluesmen like Blind Willie McTell and Big Bill Broonzy. I used to sit by the record player and copy Chuck Berry and the Beatles. You can never copy someone completely, so you end up developing your own style.
I noticed a lot of guitar players neglected the rhythm part of rhythm guitar and decided I would try to focus in that. As my skill and knowledge of the instrument grew, I found lead started to come naturally. Sometimes I play guitar like a frustrated drummer. Ha ha!
What Jimmy Page did was pretty inspiring for guitar players. He married a lot of acoustic elements into hard rock. The kind of chords he used were very left of center, with a lot of dissonance - I absorbed that like a sponge. It's all over the music I write, always.
Being a female guitar player back in school wasn't great, and I had to change schools so many times. The male drummers and bass players thought it was cool, but male guitar players said, 'It's a guy's thing. You should be doing something else, like playing the harp.'
Well, to tell you the straight honest truth, it was like a Grateful Dead cover band. I didn't feel - and nothing against the guys - I didn't feel that they were opening up like they should. I'll tell you what, with guitar players, Steven has what I like in guitar players.
All the really good guitar players - Jimi Hendrix, Jimmy Page, or even Bert Jansch or John Martin - I love all those people. But I didn't start out thinking that I would be a guitar player. In the beginning, I played the guitar so I could sing. I mainly concentrated on my voice.
I don't think there's any music that you hear on the radio today that would be possible without Jimi Hendrix. Rock, blues-rock, heavy metal, any guitar stuff when you get right down to it - Jimi did it. He's certainly the guy who basically invented the blues-rock genre for guitar players.
I'm always trying to emulate guitar. Especially when I'm playing the trombone, that's what I think about. Like, I listen to guitar players every day: Warren Haynes, Lenny Kravitz, Prince, different people. And I'm always trying to find out a way how I can get my trombone to sound like that.
I'm not like other guitar players. In fact, I'm not even like most acoustic players because I use the nylon-string acoustic. I do play steel-string and the electric guitar, too, because I love rock 'n' roll and guitarists like Jimi Hendrix. But my bread and butter has always been the nylon-string.
However you feel about Dimebag, this is one of the most influential metal guitar players of the '90s. I was just talking to someone that I am hiring to bring on the tour who said that, when he was at the funeral, that Eddie Van Halen came and put his striped guitar in the coffin. That's a pretty big deal.
I was a kid that grew up listening to The Beatles and The Stones and Jimmy Page and Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck, and I wanted all of that in there. But at the same time, a large part of my playing is Tony Iommi and Billy Gibbons. I'm just a sum total of all of the guitar players that I think were really cool.