I bought my first electric guitar when I moved to Memphis; a Gibson with a DeArmond pickup which I used with a small Gibson amplifier.
I'm not the same person as the character I do in my songs. She's crazy! The 'Daddy Song' was the first sketch I ever wrote, especially on the guitar and everything - and definitely the most offensive. And absurd.
In the early days, I had very little idea about arrangements, and I wrote songs a little flat, as it were, just on an acoustic guitar. They didn't really have quite enough nuance.
I'm singing what I want to sing based on the emotion of what that day feels like. That's what comes out of my mouth and guitar. That impacts people. They know anything can happen.
Well, you know it was so different from when you rehearsed. You're out there with your guitar and trying to get a sound, but it doesn't sound anything like what you expect!
It is the most delightful thing that ever happens to me, when I hear something coming out of my guitar and out of my mouth that wasn't there before.
We actually added an extra electric guitar to beef up 'Need You Now', but we haven't changed any of this 'Own The Night' record at all for the international releases.
I got into guitar because no parent will buy their eight-year-old kid drums unless they're divorced and trying to get back at their wife. You know what I mean?
Once I picked up an electric guitar, I lost interest in piano, and I just wanted to rock. I studied piano for so long, I got burned out on it.
I think there'll always be a kid with a guitar with a song in his heart that's going to turn me on - that's as far as I can see. Whether lots of people agree with that, I'm not sure.
I've got four or five records in my head at a time that I try to work on and I would like to do a guitar trio record next - since The Police I've mostly made records with keyboards.
Probably my favorite artists to listen to James Taylor, Stevie Wonder - I haven't gone back in a really long time and really listened to them - my first guitar influences. It's been awhile since I revisited that.
I would have to say I'm bored with the standard rock, guitar solos, but I've done it for five albums now, and this time I wanted to go in a completely different direction. I wasn't interested in showing off any more.
During the 1970s and 1980s Gibson did use my likeness, but we never signed anything. This new Signature model is the first time we struck a formal written deal for a guitar with my name on it.
As a teenager, I used to travel everywhere with my guitar. I appreciated the fact it was with me, but it was always an absolute pain to carry around - even though, in those days, you could take in on a plane as hand luggage.
Some people are drawn naturally - there are natural guitarists, and there are natural piano players, and I think guitar implies travel, a sort of footloose gypsy existence. You grab your bag and you go to the next town.
I saw the Village as a place you could escape to, to express yourself. When I first went there, I wrote and performed poetry. Then I drew portraits for a couple of years. It took a while before I thought about picking up a guitar.
My brother, who's ten years younger than me, worked with me in the studio when he was very young. He's a guitar player and does programming as well. To have the working and personal relationship coincide has been very natural.
Guitar music or rock n' roll or whatever you want to call it sort of goes away with trends, but it'll never go away completely. It can't die because it's so fundamentally attractive.
Ninety percent of all music is always crap, and when too many people decide they're going to have guitar bands, then ninety percent of them are going to be crap. It's just a given law.
I think I could walk into any music shop anywhere and with a guitar off the rack, a couple of basic pedals and an amp I could sound just like me. There's no devices, customized or otherwise, that give me my sound.
