Joe Satriani Quotes

I don't regret giving up football for acting. I love football and am very proud I played for Morton. But the truth is, I wasn't going to get much higher in football. At the same time, I sensed I could go somewhere in acting. I'm 28, which is young for acting, whereas in football I'd now be near the end of my career.

I only went a year to high school. I should have been in high school, but I was in a band, and when you're successful doing that - well, you aren't too likely to go back.

I always loved rock guitar. I just never put it together that that's what I'd end up doing. I had no aspirations to be a musician, but I picked up a guitar for two seconds and haven't put it down since.

I originally wanted to go into sports, but my first concert was KISS at the shooting of 'KISS Meets The Phantom Of The Park.' The minute I saw Gene and Paul... it was all over. I knew that's what I wanted to do.

I've got an article where my mum says that I used to run home from school to watch the Stones on TV. Right from when I was at college I wanted to be in that band.

Hendrix was a perfect guitarist. And that's all I wanted to do as a kid. Play a guitar properly and jump around.

I have held Jimi Hendrix's Woodstock guitar and imagined what it would be like to play it, but that's the extent of it.

I have a Stratocaster, which is part of my long, doomed ambition to become Jimi Hendrix.

At 17, I realized that it's going to be a tough decision to make, but I had the clarity of thought to walk out of cricket and try my luck in acting.

I think if I could pick one moment it would be when I was going to college in the South and it wasn't what I wanted to do. I knew I wanted to be out here in LA and acting.

18th September, 1970; Jimi Hendrix dies. I'm still on the football team when I get the news. So I take my helmet off and confront the coach to tell him I'm quitting the team. In a moment of brilliance he gives me one look and says "OK".

I started out playing guitar because Jimi Hendrix was my hero, so my roots were really based on Jimi Hendrix and his style of playing.

Richard Lloyd of Television is one of my favorite guitarists. His mentor was Jimi Hendrix when he was just 14. Jimi was always pounding everything he knew into that kid.

When I graduated college, I decided that I was going to try to be an actor, but it was my dirty secret.

I've never been one to crave attention, which I know means that this is probably the worst career to pick. I get anxious even when people come up to me for pictures sometimes. That's the one thing that makes me hesitant about my future. But I love music too much to not do it.

Early on, when I first started acting professionally, it was really important for me to get my parents on board, because they were so against it.

All of a sudden, someone threw me in front of this rock and roll band. And I decided then and there that was it. I never wanted to do anything else.

Initially, I just used the guitar as a prop. I'd pose with it in front of a mirror in my Kiss makeup when I was skipping school. Then I figured out how to play the main riff to Deep Purple's 'Smoke on the Water' on just the E string. Next, my old man showed me how to play barre chords, and that's when things started getting really heavy.

I had it in my head when I was in college that I wanted to be a writer, but it took me a long time to commit to being a writer. Up until then, I had worked one dead-end job after another while writing on the side.

I think I always wished I could play guitar as well as Jimi Hendrix.

The prospect that I could actually be a journalist triggered a 'Who do you think you are?' reaction in me. It was only in going to law school and being unhappy there that I realized that I really, really had to try it.

A month before I booked 'This Is Us,' I was like, 'Maybe I should move to Montreal and work in a coffee shop.'

I had to decide between doing 'Issaq' and continuing school and I chose 'Issaq.'

I wanted to be a farmer; actually, I wanted to be a horse-breeder. And I had the stallions... but then I heard Little Richard, and that was it.

It's like being in a trance, like I get this electric current through my fingertips. Sometimes I shake. People say I look like Hendrix when I'm about to rip a solo because I move my shoulders like he does and do the chewing.