It's definitely true that Stevie Ray Vaughan is one of my all-time favorite guitarists.
Richard Lloyd of Television is one of my favorite guitarists. His mentor was Jimi Hendrix when he was just 14. Jimi was always pounding everything he knew into that kid.
The composers hated me. The singers detested me. The guitarists were terrified by me.
I don't play for the guitarists in the audience. I play for the musicians.
All the great guitarists have a spirit-a way they play and don't play.
I really wasn't needed. . . Just straightening up riffs, that's all. Just two guitarists doing it instead of one.
Drummers haven't managed to develop their individuality quite as well as guitarists have. We can be so focused on the nuts and bolts that we overlook the importance of individuality - the broader picture, if you will.
But I say these things in an objective dispassionate manner because, you know, and I can't explain why, but being one of the greatest guitarists in the world simply is not very important to me.
I think guitarists are really over-admired and over-revered.
Michael Sunday and I are the original members of the band. We first did it just for charities and benefit concerts. It was very ad-hoc, and before we knew it, we were really a band. We went through several drummers and guitarists before we were happy with the line up.
One hundred guitarists making lots of noise would not be something you'd want to listen to.
Most of my favourite guitarists are self-taught, because in a way there's less of a reverence for the instrument itself, so you end up finding and inventing however you want to play it.
I like to piece together different guitarists, unlikely bedfellows. You have Jonny Greenwood playing next to Nile Rodgers on the same track, so it becomes like an orchestra of sounds.
If I had known I would influence so many guitarists, I would have practiced more.
I play weird. I'm always just behind. We [drummers] only have so much room. We're not guitarists.
Exciting underground stuff is easier to find with YouTube than it used to be. You don't have to go to the dive bar in the bad part of town to see a band you would never usually see. My personal experience with it, when I was looking for a new lead guitarist, I was able to stalk guitarists on Youtube. And instead of having a horribly embarrassing auditioning process, I could check out peoples' playing. In some ways, you go into a record shop and the selection is narrower than it used to be with pop ruling the roost, but if you look, there's so much more to be found.
After the Soft Boys I just didn't want to work with any more guitarists.
I feel responsible to make something original as a Japanese artist. There are lots of singers and guitarists, but I feel that on stage its meaningless to copy something someone has done before.
Ray Gomez is one of the greatest guitarists of all times!
