The very first song I ever wrote was a song called 'Crazy' when I was 11 or 12 with my best girlfriends - we had a girl band. It was about loving a guy who everyone else thought you were crazy for being into.
My youngest son, who is now the drummer in my band, lives in Brooklyn. My oldest son is about to move out to California, and my daughters are both out of town.
I didn't realize Metallica was as big as they were. I just thought it was my buddy Kirk's band - we went to high school together. I wasn't really following metal.
I do have electric guitars, because I've always believed, especially when I'm working in the studio with other bands as producer, that there should be a really nice Strat around.
How lucky can one guy get? I was a runaway, and then I was in one of the biggest bands in the world. I've sold out every arena. I've sold millions and millions of records.
I have this complex that if I walk into a place wearing a colorful shirt someone will stop me and say, 'I'm sorry, but the Latin band comes through the other door.'
I didn't have bands that I was playing with growing up, so I learned to try to adapt and play these songs that were guitar songs on the piano, and sing them.
I only went a year to high school. I should have been in high school, but I was in a band, and when you're successful doing that - well, you aren't too likely to go back.
If I wasn't bound to Brooklyn, due to my own personal reasons like taking care of my mother and the fact that this is where the band is based, I would probably move to Iceland.
Those two songs condense the two albums. They also show what the audiences wanted. I was desperate to keep the band together and find something that the public would like.
I however don't go to clubs to show off and to be seen, and certainly not to make statements. I just want to be able to quietly watch a band.
And the two planes that were taking the band and crew that we had taken out to San Diego were flying out after the show. And so I was never supposed to be on that plane.
When I left Van Halen, I went in the studio and made a CD called Marching to Mars with all studio musicians. I did it immediately. With the disappointment riding on my shoulders of the breakup of the band.
Unless the clients want, I don't like to have dancers for my shows. I prefer a rock show look and like performing with a live band.
It's really hard when you break up with somebody, or somebody breaks up with you, and you're in this band; guess who you have to see in the next day in the hotel in the breakfast room? That person.
Fighting the Taliban and the various radical organizations on the front lines is like adding a Band-Aid to a cut, it may stop the bleeding but unless you clean it with antiseptic, the germs stay and multiply.
The photograph, the clothes, the sets - this was about 1974, and I started hanging out with my friend Richard Sold, who was playing in a band with Patti Smith.
My friend Fred Coury, the drummer in '80s rock band Cinderella, told me that in the rock world, you're either still there, or you're struggling to get back to where you were.
Yeah, yeah I think that's one of the biggest misconceptions towards the band. The biggest one is that we're Satan worshippers, but next to that just the fact that we're normal.
I learned the songs and played the gigs, and then they called me about a month later. They told me they were like super stoked on me and asked me to join their band.
Getting on stage, for me, was a huge thing when I first started. And back in high school, everyone was in rock bands and I was a singer/songwriter. It just seems kind of lame.
