My body is an object of work. That's why I think to be an actor is one of the most violent jobs. If you're a pianist, you have your piano. If you're a guitarist, you have your guitar. But if you're a dancer, or you're an actor - your instrument is your body.
I picked Dad's guitar up when I was 8. It hurt to play, so I put it down and picked it back up when I was 15 and dug in. The guitar helped me come out of my shell and kind of gave me an identity at school.
The bulk of my set is instrumental and you have to give yourself and the audience some relief because a performance is not about great guitar playing it's really about entertainment.
George wrote Taxman, and I played guitar on it. He wrote it in anger at finding out what the taxman did. He had never known before then what could happen to your money.
My guitar is really tempermental. I don't give up on it though, I'm close to my guitar!
So, my big brother was playing guitar and I figured I'd try it too.
I had a guitar when I was 6 or 7, a plastic guitar with the Beatles' faces on it. It would be a collector's item now. It would fetch a hefty sum, I imagine.
I do music because I can just pick up my guitar and sing, and completely satisfy, instant gratification. I don't need a script, I don't people, I don't need anything, cameras, I just have myself and my guitar, or keyboard.
But you have to give your whole life to a cello. When I realized that, I went back to the guitar and just turned the volume up a bit louder.
I'm pursuing soundtrack work in the southern California area and down the line I plan to make a moody, intense acoustic album. Not all acoustic, but an acoustic - oriented guitar record that I've already written most of the material for.
You can be a singer, and you can be a guitar player, but putting them together is another animal.
There are a lot of influences from different countries in my music. For example, I chose the guitar in my music, I think that it is a feminine instrument, so when I do not sing, the music expresses my voice.
My first guitar was like a campfire guitar. And it was left at a house that my family had moved into... and the guitar was at the house. It was all strung up. It's normally something that would be beyond a bit of rubbish.
I moved to Nashville to be a songwriter. I found out that was a job, that someone would pay you to sit in a room with a guitar and make up songs! It is the greatest job in the world. I wrote three or four songs a day. That's what I lived for.
What I wanted to do was play the guitar but I don't like instrumental rock. I think it is tripe.
Enthusiasm is everything. It must be taut and vibrating like a guitar string.
I'm not too picky about guitars. I love to collect them, mostly oddballs, but I'm not married to any brand or model. Whatever guitar has the best character for the song is the one I want to use, because if you've got a style, you're going to sound like yourself no matter what guitar you play.
You feel this pressure that people will take you more seriously if you play guitar, but I've decided I'm a singer and that's enough.
If you make it sound too much like a synth, it will just sound like a guitar part played on a synth.
At some point around '94 or '95, 'Rolling Stone' said that guitar rock was dead and that the Chemical Brothers were the future. I think that was the last issue of 'Rolling Stone' I ever bought.
Most things in my life I had before leaving home. Values, support, great family. I was shaped at an early age. A musician playing guitar, I wanted to be a folk singer.
I play guitar, piano, bass and percussion.
I had a big background in listening to classical music and I started trying to compose, like I was playing the guitar but I heard an orchestra in my head.
I have pictures of me sitting in the racquetball court in my pajamas with an acoustic guitar, and Wolfgang is probably just two-and-a-half-feet tall. I'll never forget the day I saw his foot tapping along in beat! I knew then, I couldn't wait for the day I'd be able to make music with my son. I don't know what more I could ask for.
To me, the guitar is a tool for songwriting, and it's fun, too. The day that it's not fun, that's when I'm not gonna play guitar anymore.
I wish I played guitar so I could start a band with great musicians.
But I've come to the point in my evolution on the instrument where I realize that I can't play the same stuff that just a guitar player or organ player would play - and I need to embrace that in a big way.
I don't try to write songs that will further my career. I write about things that I care about. I don't have a career as much as I'm having an adventure with a guitar. I never liked the business way of doing it. You have to follow some sort of instinct.
I grew up around guitar players.
I watched my daddy play that guitar, and whenever I could, I would pick it up and strum on it.
My dream is to one day just be me and my guitar. I'm working myself to the core. Who am I, underneath everything else? I'm still on that journey, to find that core.
I went to see John Mayall at the Marquee, with Peter Green on guitar, and that was a particularly good gig.
I'm thinking about learning a few new things - like taking classical guitar lessons - and I'd like to bring what I learn into hard rock.
It was in San Diego and I was onstage and couldn't remember how to play the guitar properly. I was in terrible pain and my nervous system was just going wild, like somebody had just run a car over me.
If a little kid picks up Guitar Hero and learns 'Smoke On The Water,' he soon finds out that if he wants the chicks to look at him, he'd better learn it on the guitar!
I taught myself how to play the guitar. I never studied music.
