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.
There was a period when I'd just come out of college where I'd been playing classical guitar and I suddenly realised that it wasn't what I wanted to do with the rest of my life.
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.
I guess trying to throw my body into the guitar is so natural for me that I don't even know how to explain it. I can't imagine life without it.
I've always loved music, but I never really played anything. After 'Walk the Line' and learning to play guitar, and having that sense of performing, I think that certainly opened the door for me, for music.
I started off with violin, then I started learning guitar, then I went to piano. But I self-taught piano just because I enjoyed it. I've always really enjoyed music.
I definitely don't see myself as much of a singer, because my upbringing is really based around the guitar, learning chord progressions and that sort of thing. So the singing aspect of what I do has been a secondary adventure.
I'm a dancer, so I do four hours of dance a week of ballet, jazz, hip hop, contemporary. I also play the piano and I just started learning the guitar.
I discovered after going to music festivals that I am a rock fan. I love the guitars, the phrasing, and the abandon of rock fans.
Whenever I'm on tour and I'm in my hotel room and I'm writing and playing my guitar, I go in the bathroom and I record whatever I'm writing in there. It's just what I love to do.
Because I don't play guitar any more, African harmonies and rhythms have been an inspiration to me. I love the raw origin of the sound. It complements my voice and words naturally.
