Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I heard the Beatles and the Stones, and Mom bought me an electric guitar. I played lead for four years and then switched to bass. One day someone suggested that I should sing, so I sheepishly stepped up to the microphone and the rest is rock history.
When I was around 7 or 8 my Dad took me to a B.B. King recording session, well, that really did it. Huge and lasting impressions. After all that I pretty much knew playing guitar was something I was going to do because I just had to do it. And I did.
A Strat was a thing of wonder .. when I was 14 or 15, the Shadows were a big influence, and they had the first Strats that came to England. I like to play all kinds of guitars, but I wasn't getting the sound I really wanted until I got a Stratocaster
I really truly love all styles of music. A lot of people say that, but the first station they turn to when they get in the car is a rock station. I don't always do that. I really enjoy everything. But, of course, I'm a rock shred guitar player first.
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.
When I was a kid in school, and you asked me what I was gonna be, I mean, even as a little first grader, I was gonna be a guitar picker on the 'Grand Ole Opry.' I just had it in my head that that's what I wanted to do, having no idea how it was done.
Where I grew up, I could be a punk rocker and a jock. But in college, it became apparent that those two worlds didn't mix. When I brought my guitar back to school after Thanksgiving break, a friend handed me his bass and said, 'Listen to the Ramones.'
Sometimes it's the mistakes that end up leading you into new territory .. like the guitar solo on 'Peelin' Taters' - I had some speaker problems, but the tone ended up sounding better than if I had new speakers .. it's a 60's Nashville, 'uptown' thing
I decided, "Well, I'll be a forest ranger!" Because I thought, "I'll get to go out in the woods, I'll be in the forest, and I can sit in a tower and watch for forest fires and play my guitar. That's what I want to do!" Well, I was an idiot, of course.
Back when I was in high school, I came out onstage with my guitar and had four guys playing behind me. We were just playing a dance, but I was standing in front of an audience rocking out. I'm still rocking out like when I was a kid. I haven't changed.
P.I.L. has been a favorite of mine since high school especially there metal box album. The guitarist Keith Levine gets some of the best sounds ever to come out of a guitar. The songs are really free form and experimental and have a heavy dub influence.
There were times I used to go to parties when I was, you know, like 15-, 16-years-old, and I'd always bring my guitar, and all my friends would be like, sing one of the Smokey songs. And everything I sang was his music, and I could sound just like him.
But then there was Hendrix, man. Jimi was really the last cat to freak me. Jimi was playing all the stuff I had in my head. I couldn't believe it, when I first heard him. Man, no one can ever do what he did with a guitar. No one can ever take his place.
I also generally play slide guitar in standard tuning, which enables me to switch back and forth between using the slide and fretting notes and chords conventionally without having to relearn the fretboard, as one must do when playing in an open tuning.
As I've grown older I've been more influenced by more meandering styles of guitar playing, whether it's Celtic or Ethiopian folk music or some kind of noisier jazz like Sonny Sharrock. In terms of songwriting, I don't know that I could even pin it down.
I don't understand why some people will only accept a guitar if it has an instantly recognizable guitar sound. Finding ways to use the same guitar people have been using for 50 years to make sounds that no one has heard before is truly what gets me off.
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 put in the sounds of instruments such as the guitar and piano, which everybody hears often, and tried to go with melodies that would sound familiar. Rather than trying to do music that I want to do, I focused on doing music that I want my fans to hear.
I started out in a heavy metal band with a guy who could really play guitar, and I thought the only thing missing from Guided By Voices was a lead guitarist. In the early days, I would bring people in just to play leads, like Greg Demos and Steve Wilbur.
Anybody who picks up a guitar and tells you that there's some inner message that they're trying to convey... it's nonsense. They're not being honest. The reason they're doing this is they wanna get lots of chicks and they don't want to work for a living.
And this whole period of time of gradually working at being a better guitar player and songwriter have gradually led me to the point where I feel I'm doing a clearer representation of the thing that I've been feeling inside me since I was four years old.
Keith Richards ... was once asked how he came up with all those amazing guitar riffs. His answer? He just starts playing until he makes the right mistake. In other words he's optimistic he will create something good by virtue of getting something "wrong."
Charlie Christian played amplified guitar with Benny Goodman's quartet. He was the greatest guitar player that ever was. But he never looked up from the guitar. But I put a little dance to it. They appreciate seein' something along with hearin' something.
I figured out how to get the guitar to rumble...I put it on the middle pickup, turn the tone know down, grab it by the wang bar, and just shake it on the floor... a Stratocaster is pretty tough - I wouldn't recommend that anybody do that with their ES-335
It was when I got to NXT with Dusty Rhodes, being the creative force he was, and told us to bring our most creative side every single week. One of those weeks, I brought the guitar and started telling stories while I played, and it just evolved from there.
I'm not a really good classical guitarist by any means, but what I learned from this is a way of working very slowly on solo pieces and I enjoyed working on these pieces of John's. They were not written for solo guitar but a lot of them were easy to adapt.
Actually, because I'm so small, when I strike an open A chord I get physically thrown to the left, and when I play an open G chord I go right. That's how hard I play, and that's how a lot of my stage act has come about. I just go where the guitar takes me.
I have seen Tommy Emanuel play; my wife and I went to see him and he just melted my face off. How do you play guitar like that? There are so many people that play at a ridiculous level and I sit there watching them and I'm like, 'Wow, wish I could do that.'
Going onstage without my primary instrument is like being a guitarist and going up onstage with no guitar waiting for you. What do you do? That's why performance is painful for me, because I feel like I am always in a strange place with a bit of a handicap.
My mom and dad divorced when I was 8 years old, but my Dad never left my life. We would go over there on weekends and he'd be playing his guitar, listening to Bobby Blue Bland and B. B. King and KBLX radio while he was out in the garage painting custom cars.
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.
There were no rules. There's no guide to follow. I would just trust my instincts for some unknown reason. Something inside me would say, "This guitar is not loud enough," and I wouldn't know why. You never know how to reach that point until you've reached it.
I know artists whose medium is life itself, and who express the inexpressible without brush, pencil, chisel or guitar. They neither paint nor dance. Their medium is Being. Whatever their hand touches has increased life.... They are the artists of being alive.
To be in Boston, which is a great city and which is full of many colleges and young kids, and to be around that many people that were at the same point in their lives, who played guitar or whatever instrument - it was just perfect. It was a great environment.
My dad was a club musician. He was always playing guitar and playing loads of soul records and '60s rock n' roll. Whenever he used to cook, he used to play Donny Hathaway, Aretha Franklin, The Kinks, and the Spencer Davis Group - a lot of really earthy things.
I grew up not really listening to guitar players. Especially when I was studying music, I was just interested in piano players and arrangers and composers; I came to playing in a band from the perspective of someone who never expected to play guitar in a band.
Music to me is spontaneous, writing is spontaneous and it's all based on not trying to do it. From beginning to end, whether it's writing a song, or playing guitar, or a particular chord sequence, or blowing a horn, it's based on improvisation and spontaneity.
I started playing guitar when I was 12, and I started getting into more metal, like Maiden and Metallica... Of course, as I kind of got better and better in the guitar, I was listening to more guitar players, so then I got into, I guess, more of the prog side.
My father was in a dance band, and I wanted to do what he did, play the saxophone, but I couldn't blow a note, so he suggested the guitar. Chromatic harmonica was actually my first instrument, and I got very good at it - not quite Stevie Wonder, but very good.
With seven boys and one sister, there was always a lot of music in the house. A few of my brothers were playing instruments, so it was from hearing that, coupled with discovering early rock, which triggered me to pick up a guitar and try to pick out the notes.
You are working up to Mr. Fantastic Fiction levels of Zombie Expert, which is like playing Guitar Hero on some level that actually melts the guitar controller, burning your fingers with searing hot plastic till you scream in pain. Only with words. And zombies.
I put the guitar back in the case. I can't even look at it anymore. Instead, I want to make brownies. I want an end result there's a recipe for. I want to combine eggs and water and oil and chocolate and flour and sugar and vanilla and get something fulfilling.
I don't want to hear from a band that pretty much sounds like another band. Oh I've heared this riff before, or I've heared these words that everyone is saying. I want to hear new poetry, new guitar riffs, new drum-beats, new sounds. Then I'm really interested.
When I started off in Wales, I sang and accompanied myself with guitar in the '50s. And then I got a band together, which is a rhythm section, really. I used to do a lot of blues, and rhythm and blues, and '50s rock 'n' roll and country, and all kinds of stuff.
Many kids and parents ask me, 'What kind of guitar can I buy?' It's a great opportunity for those people to be able to buy a quality guitar that's not necessarily a little Fender or whatever. Ernie Ball signature model guitar is something that's more signature.
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 did Bronislaw Kaper's tune. He wrote "On Green Dolphin Street." I mean, I did all those ballads, all them ballads from South America. All those tunes - the guitar concerto on Sketches Of Spain. All those are Spanish melodies. Some of them we made up ourselves.
I guess I'm interested in pushing the boundaries of the cello without giving up on the idea of playing the cello, if that makes any sense. I have no real interest in putting the cello through different effects to make it sound like a guitar or other instruments.
As much as I love acoustic Neil Young - and I do deeply - I may be more passionate about the electric. Luckily it's not a contest, and we never have to make that choice. But Neil Young on an electric guitar - I feel like I've never seen or heard anything like 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!