I'm not a great piano player.
I'm the quiet bass player.
A Redskin is a football player.
I worship pianos like they are prize diamonds, and I never willfully do damage to them. But I grew up playing guitars, and you treat a guitar like a best friend or a little brother or a lover you have a tempestuous relationship with.
A guitar for me is pretty much strictly in the context of writing songs for my band, coming up with ideas with my band, and then being able to perform those songs as best as I can on stage - that's what the guitar for me has always been.
I preferred not to be laden down with a big instrument. If you're behind a guitar, you get used to being behind a guitar, and you don't really perform because you can't. I wanted to be able to just hold on to the mike and sing.
I've always loved the guitar. You see Jimi Hendrix playing the guitar with his teeth, and OK, you know you're never going to be able to do that, but I always wanted to play an instrument of some sort.
Can you imagine a guy breaking into your car, and he steals your guitar case 'cause he thinks it's a guitar, and he gets it home and opens it up and there's a rake inside it, an electric toilet plunger and a dog skull? That actually happened.
My parents got me a $25 Kent steel-string acoustic guitar when I was around 12. The following Christmas, my parents bought me a Conora electric guitar. It looked almost like a Gretsch. It cost $59, and my mom still has it.
I got this Christmas gift with the entire Beatles catalog. I had fun trying to duplicate what I was hearing on these records, only using the instruments I had at hand - an acoustic guitar, and that's all. It was endlessly amusing to me to try to imit...
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.
I tend to write on an acoustic guitar or the piano. I have kind of a rule: if I can't sit down and play this and get the song over, I don't take it to the band, because most any good song, you can sit down and deliver it with a piano or a guitar.
I remember growing up always loving the guitar. I used to love to watch the people play on the Country Western shows on TV. My folks told me that when I was just a toddler, I used to pretend I was playing a guitar on a toothpick.
When I got my first guitar, I played along with everything I heard that had guitar in it, like the Ramones, Nirvana and Sublime, as well as whatever hip-hop and R&B stuff was on the radio.
It's just something I've always done. In South Texas, the first guitar you get is a Mexican guitar. And the first one I got, the first thing I did was take it apart.
Martin guitars have now brought out, you know, on a more traditional level, the Stephen Stills' model of Martin guitars. It's beautiful. I just went inside. I bought one immediately.
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.
I still play that guitar. It's a Martin D-18 with a clear pick guard. I've played that guitar on and off my TV shows for nearly 50 years.
I'm not that fluid when it comes to scales and modes. I just pick up the guitar and play. It's all about exploration: just tune the guitar any way you want and start playing.
I dreamed of having a Gibson. I had a cheap Kent - you know, a Japanese guitar - and then a Kanora, a Japanese guitar. I borrowed a friend's Harmony for years. To have a Gibson was really, really my dream as a kid.
The lead guitar work is a bit repetitious, but when a song is under two minutes long, I don't have much room anyway. Thank goodness. But I've always contributed guitar parts to every band I've ever been in, so I'll always play the axe.
