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.
Playing guitar is a never-finished journey.
My ideal travel companions are my surfboard, wetsuit, and guitar.
I was glad to see other blues guitarists like Albert King have crossover successes like me. We played in the same places like the Whisky and the Filmore. When Albert made his guitar cry, he could cut you so deep!
I play guitar, piano, bass and percussion.
Let me explain something about guitar playing. Everyone's got their own character, and that's the thing that's amazed me about guitar playing since the day I first picked it up. Everyone's approach to what can come out of six strings is different from another person, but it's all valid.
If I could go back in time and see any band, It would be Link Wray and the Raymen.
I'm not very good at the accordion. If I played guitar, I wouldn't be on anyone's album. But because I play the accordion and no one else does, I end up doing strange things.
Paint pictures with sound. First, find your white-the deepest, roundest sound you can play on the guitar. Then, find your black-which is the most extreme tonal difference from white you can play. Now, just pick the note where you've got white, pick it where you've got black, and then find all those colors in between. Get those colors down, and you'll be able to express almost any emotion on the guitar. ?
Unless the guitar works as a color, then I don't use it, so I haven't been playing guitar too much lately.
Things like guitars and ukuleles, you should never part with it, because there will probably be good, healthy times spent, just playing and writing.
In most places that are rich in guitar culture, everyone uses their fingers, like in Spain or Africa. In Japan there are string instruments played that way. It is not until you get in the States that you find people using picks.
When I write in the studio, I tend to gravitate toward the ability to play really loud, aggressive, post-punk stuff, with big, heavy guitars and a big rock drum sound.
Instruments fascinate me because they're completely awkward. When I picked up a guitar for the first time I was like, "What is this?" because it's so foreign and unknown.
I've played guitar for years, and wanted to play guitar, but we got halfway through the last one and realized we hadn't used any.
I felt I had nothing more to say. Everything would have had to be a replay of the previous two or three albums, and that decided me to stop. What bothered me most was not playing guitar at all anymore. I felt I had no more contact with the instrument. It was just a piece of wood to me. I even thought music had definitely left me. After fourteen albums, there may be an overload phase, a sort of lassitude.
I don't separate writing songs from poetry and short fiction. In the area where I work in my house, there's a word processor and a guitar.
Everybody would grab a guitar and listen to somebody else and call themselves a folk singer. When they didn't know no more songs, they'd run out of them.
I love the guitar for its harmony; it is my constant companion in all my travels.
Every once in awhile I'll call up Eddie (Van Halen) and ask, Found that fourth chord yet?