The one thing I do have is good ears. I don't mean perfect pitch, but ears for picking things up. I developed my ear through piano theory, but I never had a guitar lesson in my life, except from Eric Clapton off of records.
I took lessons for about everything you could imagine - gymnastics to karate to flute and piano. My mom always definitely kept me in some kind of class or program, but for guitar, I kinda gave up on then kinda just taught myself. Same thing with pian...
When I moved to New York to act I was no good at working restaurants - hosting, waiting, bussing, dishwashing - I wasn't good at any aspect. But I did have a guitar. So I would sing 'Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard,' but you would only hear the c...
I've been into Sonic Youth since junior high school. I think I kind of have ADD, so it's good music for ADD because it just throws you in different directions all the time. I really like Kim Gordon's voice and Thurston Moore's voice, and I like the g...
I was in 'Jacques Brel' Off-Broadway for many years, so I've always been a singing actress, but the songwriting was a complete surprise. I had never written a song in my life. We were on the road with 'Jacques Brel' doing the national tour, and I pic...
I've seen kids turn their lives around. It's usually a kid who's outside of the team-sport world, or maybe has a darker personality or doesn't fit in. Skateboarding ends up being something they latch onto. It sounds hokey, but finding a focus on some...
I've always enjoyed singing and can't recall a time in my life where I wasn't singing. I'm most grateful for the strength I have in that department. I have a lot of bad habits on the guitar which limits my playing ability. But I get a little better e...
My favorite thing about guitar, and the thing that always drew me to it when I was first learning to play it, was those moments when you think you know what it might sound like, but you don't, and then you hit it, and it's a total surprise. You hear ...
I like to sing because my mother was a singer. She sang to me all the time, so I learned to love singing. I did have a career as little 10-year-old George Benson. I made my first record as a vocalist, but I've been playing guitar since I was 9.
As much as I love acoustic Neil Young - and I do deeply - I may be more passionate about the electric. Luckily it's not a contest, and we never have to make that choice. But Neil Young on an electric guitar - I feel like I've never seen or heard anyt...
I've always been interested in singing. My sister's a fantastic singer, and it's just something that's always been around. I play saxophone and guitar. I'd definitely like to pursue it, and it's something I'd like to keep going, if not as a career, t...
I'm very lazy when it comes to making the original sound. I don't go through amplifiers and different compressors and signal parts. I just grab something, whether its an old guitar or a children's toy that happens to be lying around, and record it st...
Actually, there was another band where we were three girls, around '84 when I met John Zorn, called Sunset Chorus. It was just bass and drums and guitar- we didn't make any records but we played a lot of different clubs in New York.
My father played guitar, so I always wanted to play for that reason. But I think the biggest reason was just the '90s in general - growing up listening to the Smashing Pumpkins, Green Day and bands like that, and going to concerts and thinking it was...
I knew I wanted to sing when I was a very small boy. When I was probably 4 years old. My mother played a guitar and I would sit with her and she would sing and I learned to sing along with her.
I play Rock Band, which is Guitar Hero times ten. You can play with four people, so when you have parties, you have a real band. Nobody ever wants to sing, so I'm always the one throwing down on the mic.
My guitar only has five strings 'cause the top one broke and I decided not to put it back on: when I play chords I only play bar chords, and the top one always used to cut me there.
I started playing the guitar when we started filming the pilot to 'Lost in Space,' which was way back in December of 1964, and there's a little bit in the pilot that was used in the first season where Will Robinson is sitting around some bad foam rub...
Greg Ginn was certainly a huge influence on my guitar playing. I put him up there with people like Eddie Van Halen. Eddie Van Halen changed everything; I don't necessarily like everything he did, but he definitely changed everything.
I'm honored when young people say they've gone to school on slide guitar with my records. But people get their influence from my live shows and records and YouTube, not me personally. I walk around with a hat on. People don't know it's me.
At the point where I'm trying to force something and it's not happening, and I'm getting frustrated with, say, writing a poem, I can go and pick up the brushes and start painting. At the point where the painting seems to not be going anywhere, I go a...
