I thought what I was good at doing was playing real simple guitar licks, since I'd cut my teeth on what Duane Eddy was doing; licks that were simple but had staying power.
I mean, I can sit down with a guitar, and in fact, we do two, three songs with just guitar and percussion.
For me, the most difficult thing is that I am learning melodies on guitar from some songs whose melodies were not meant to be played on guitar. Ever. They were intended mostly for keyboards or melodic percussion.
I never set out to write a certain kind of song, I just play my guitar and see if I catch something.
I consider the guitar a tool for the most part. I do pick up the acoustic now and then, I certainly don't have any routine. Usually the only time I practice is when the band gets together. Hendrix has always been one of my favorite players, but I was a sucker for Nugent in the late 1970's.
I even played bass for a while. Besides playing electric guitar, I'd also get asked to play some acoustic stuff. But, since I didn't have an acoustic guitar at the time, I used to borrow one from a friend so I could play folk joints.
Hendrix was the bass player for Little Richard. We were both left-handed, but we would use a right-handed guitar held upside down and backwards. He developed my slides and my riffs. In fact he used to say, and this is documented, 'I patterned my style after Dick Dale.'
I can't remember the first song I learned to play on bass, but the first song I learned to play on guitar was 'For Your Love' by the Yardbirds. That kind of was the beginning for me. I thought it was a great song and I loved the open chord progression at the beginning of that song.
He made it quite clear that if I didn't play the role, I would be dead within a week. As you can imagine, the guy who turned down Hagrid would be like the guy who called the Beatles a guitar band. So I couldn't possibly refuse, really.
I was a late bloomer. I was a kinda shy little kid, definitely a child of the dark side. I wanted to play guitar and be in a rock band.
I think it gets boring (for the audience) for the lead singer to have a guitar hanging on them all the time.
Sometimes I feel like I'm taking on a role when I'm writing a song, and it doesn't always have to be true. I'm not sitting in my room crying with my guitar, writing a slow solo about a depressing breakup; that's not me.
When you tune your guitar in a different way, it lends itself to a new way of looking at your songwriting.
I love the language of, you know, the old black country man with a blues guitar and... boots and the quick banter.
I started playing guitar when I was 13. I'd written a few songs on the guitar over some time. I'd written a book of poetry, and I got a book of lyrics that I had when I was a kid.
So I played the acoustic guitar and harmonica and stomped my foot and I think I was right in assuming that Greenwich Village would be the best place to perform my own material and possibly get some attention, move on to making records and all.
I have to practice to be good at guitar. I have to write 100 songs before you write the first good one.
Bruce's band is so different from the Grateful Dead; there's no lead guitar player, for one thing.
I pestered the hell out of everybody I ran into until I could play the guitar well enough to write and sing with it.
If you play the guitar, you've got to hold the chords down with one hand while you play with the other, so you're limited to one hand. But the piano is the king of instruments because you have your 10 fingers, which become the 10 members of the orchestra.
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.
I wanted to be heard myself, which is hard in a household of people who were very showy. It forced me to find myself and define a personality and a way of being different, and that's a thing that's going to help me to survive in a world of many people playing the guitar.
And they kind of left to find a guitar player at the very end, so you know, I don't really take it as any slight that I wasn't able to play on the record. It's flattering just to play with them period.
My guitar only has five strings 'cause the top one broke and I decided not to put it back on: when I play chords I only play bar chords, and the top one always used to cut me there.
I was a drummer and I played the guitar.
I could hear and feel music going on in me, and I couldn't get it out. You can always depend on a guitar.
Music is still part of my life, but I hate the idea of people coming to see me play the guitar because they've seen me in movies. You want people who are listening to be only interested in the music.
If I wake up in the middle of the night and have an idea, I want to go to my computer and be able to do it. So I hired someone at Guitar Center to come over to my house and teach me Logic music program, and I learned it over a couple months.
Marc Bolan had inspired so many people to pick up a guitar and join a band.
When it comes to music, it's my clothes, it's my guitar, it's my voice, it's my song.
It's always great playing with other musicians. It's also a great situation where I'm the older guy, I've influenced generations of guitar players.
As far as I'm concerned, I'm just a guitar player, and my job is to go out there and play and entertain and do my thing.
It's different for every song. But for 'Say Something,' I think it was Chad who had an idea on guitar, and I had an idea on piano for different songs, and we just married them together. We bounce things off each other constantly and kind of massage all these ideas into a three and a half minute pop song.
I have spent over 60 years bent over a guitar and to know that I wrote 70 compositions that masters have recorded, that makes me feel so good and full, and proud and thankful to the good Lord.
I'm pretty basic as far as technique is concerned. I don't use many gadgets, and I like the sound my guitar makes, anyway.
My dad was good friends with the Bad Medicine Blues Band - one of the only blues bands in Fargo, as you can imagine! He took me out to see them play when I was 12 years old and I was really inspired by their guitar player, Ted Larsen.
