I don't put myself on Jeff Beck's level, but I can relate to him when he says he'd rather be working on his car collection than playing the guitar.
Some bands today have the experience of really working together and honing their craft. And other bands are very much like, 'I just got a guitar for Christmas, let's start a band.' And you can hear the difference.
When I was small, my parents came back from Tijuana, and my dad bought me a very small acoustic guitar. I loved it. I started making up my own songs right away.
I love playing guitar. I grew up with my dad playing. But acting is definitely the forefront, I guess I'd say, in terms of career and something that I really enjoy and feel lucky to be able to do.
The Lounge Lizards were relating with a tradition and it was like I was playing within a musical context. The guitar playing stood out as being different in some way. That was a real education for me.
I think we raised about 20,000 pounds. There was a live performance thing so we thought we'd donate the equipment for an online charity in Britain. I hated to part with my guitar, but it was for such a great cause.
I was really into Black Sabbath, but heavy guitars can really be very limiting, it's a great frequency and it's great fun to listen to but on the other hand, musically you can do a lot more without it.
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.
I created this picture of this character who would play the guitar effortlessly, who had no limitations, performing beautiful music, and he moved around with great acrobatic skills, just capturing the audience and being a great entertainer.
Here I was, this good guy that played football; I was gonna go play in college but I had a bad senior year. But I played guitar in assemblies whenever I could.
I started to play the guitar for a couple of years, which was fun. I still bring it out once in a while, could bust out a couple of songs, but I'm not very good at it.
I know that I'm capable of moving around on the guitar. I can express myself the way I want to and feel good about it. But as far as technical chops, I'm not a learned musician.
I wish they'd had electric guitars in cotton fields back in the good old days. A whole lot of things would've been straightened out.
When you play a guitar for a long time, you get your hand oils in there; it starts feeling good and behaving, and you just don't want to mess with that.
Like, when I write a song, the song comes first before production. Everything is written on an acoustic guitar so you can strip away everything from it and have it be equally as entertaining and good without the bells and whistles.
I wouldn't just have other people write songs and me go out and sing it. I would sit down with a guitar and write 11 or 12 good songs for an album and that is gonna take a long time.
I don't care how famous a guitarist is, he ain't learned everything. There's always somewhere to go, something to mash up, but he ain't found it yet. You never learn everything on that guitar neck.
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.
I try to become a singer. The guitar has always been abused with distortion units and funny sorts of effects, but when you don't do that and just let the genuine sound come through, there's a whole magic there.
My second record was all about big ideas - I was trying to make big statements about the culture, about life. I think in a certain way, I was a 27 year old kid with a guitar.
What I used to play was rhythm guitar before I saw Jack Bruce. I said, That's what I want to do in life. He was definitely the main influence.
