In 2010, I had been playing guitar for 50 years.
Seeing Taylor Swift live in 2013 is seeing a maestro at the top of her or anyone's game. No other pop auteur can touch her right now for emotional excess or musical reach - her punk is so punk, her disco is so disco. The red sequins on her guitar match the ones on her microphone, her shoes and 80 percent of the crowd.
I play piano and trumpet. I studied classical guitar.
The flukey part of it is, back in the early days, I had that guitar decorated with all kinds of crap wallpaper, 'Flower Power' - then that got all shaved off. And during the course of cleaning the bass up again, some of the wood got shaved down, and it probably became a lighter body than the stock factory model.
You'd always see a lady or a little girl sitting at a piano. I decided I wanted to play something more unexpected, so that's when I got interested in learning to play the guitar.
The great thing about Nashville back in the day was that the old guys hung out where the young guys were. The established writers like Harlan Howard and Jack Clement gave us encouragement and passed the guitar, you know? Chet Atkins let me sit in on his sessions. Everybody was good to us, and everybody loved the music.
I'm still like an excited kid playing guitar in front of the bedroom mirror.
If I sit down with an electric guitar, what's going to come out are Sabbath/Zeppelin type riffs, but if I'm sitting behind a piano late at night, I might write something like 'Desperado.' You're not going to write 'Desperado' between a wall of Marshalls and thumping, crushing volume.
I drive my family nuts because when I watch something on TV, I'm likely to watch it with a bass guitar. But I don't plug it in!
I started with the guitar around 12 years old but didn't learn the banjo until I was about 18 or 19.
In the beginning of my career, I wanted to be chased by girls more than anything - that's why I got the guitar. By the time we were in ABBA, the music was the only important thing.
I never had a real job either. I sort of fell out of school and ended up playing guitar.
A lot of the songs start with an image. I was sitting there playing the guitar and I pictured this old, dirty green car, with the window rolled down, in the hot, hot, hot Texas heat, and this beautiful woman I knew when I was a kid sitting behind the wheel, looking out at me.
When I'm having a bad day, I pick up my guitar.
I absolutely love the Philharmonic. I also love rock guitar.
When I got my first guitar my fingers wouldn't go to the sixth string so I took off the big E and played with just five strings. I was only 6 or 7.
I play piano and guitar. Acoustic guitar. I tried studying classical guitar when I was 16 but it got really hard. I could never play a lead to save my life.
I am Classic Rock Revisited. I revisit it every waking moment of my life because it has the spirit and the attitude and the fire and the middle finger. I am Rosa Parks with a Gibson guitar.
I never liked mellow sounding guitar.
I went to my friend's house one day, and he had an electric guitar he had just bought with a tiny little amp. I turned the volume up to 10 and I hit one chord, and I said, I'm in love.
When I was a kid. I started writing when I was 13. I got my first electric guitar when I was 13, but I'd always been singing. I had my first little acoustic when I was six. But I started being in bands when I was 13. Crappy rock bands, avant-garde things where we'd, like, 'wanna go against the norm, man.'
People do ask, 'Are you going to embellish this stuff?' I wouldn't change any of my guitar parts.
The only job I'd ever had that might be considered not playing music was teaching guitar, which I did in college for a while, but that still falls in the same category.
I don't think I picked up the guitar in the first place as a way of getting women. There are probably better ways of doing it.
My guitar is not a thing. It is an extension of myself. It is who I am.
When I moved to New York to act I was no good at working restaurants - hosting, waiting, bussing, dishwashing - I wasn't good at any aspect. But I did have a guitar. So I would sing 'Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard,' but you would only hear the chorus because the train comes by every 30 seconds.
I was a schooled musician. When I made 'Blue Velvet', I told everyone what to do. I was an arranger. I learned music in school I told the band to play this. I told the guitar to do that.
Our last jam session was this past Christmas. Dad played his harmonica, mom sang in English and Italian, and I played guitar. I'm so happy that we could share that musical experience for one last time.
The flute was an alternative to being a small fish in an increasingly bigger pool filled with a number of great guitar players.
I've got my own style on the guitar, sure, and I play rhythm in a certain way, and I use certain inflections. People have said that to me, and I understand it.
I think the way I play the guitar is very percussive. I play a lot of rhythm chops as though I were playing congas or something.
Even though there are some great keyboard players on the album, there are a number of songs with no keyboard on them and the backing is all guitar oriented. This is first time I've ever done this actually.
A guitar player goes on the road, and he misses his girlfriend for a while, but he manages to get along. A horn player gets out on the road, plays two or three towns, and then he'll get lonely, and next thing you know, he's packed up and left. It's better not to hire him in the first place.
People don't understand what music really is. I've been a musician since I was 6 years old. I got my first piano, was playing recitals at 8, 10 I picked up a guitar, 12 I picked up my first Pearl Master drum set. I was an artist before I was an 'artist.'
It was really fun. Well, Bobby was just basically a folk singer. He didn't play with any bands or anything, like all the rest of us. Just played his guitar and sang his songs.
It's hard to say this about a guy like Eddie Van Halen, one of the greatest guitar players who ever lived, but he's really limited to a style and they're locked into it.
