I was inspired to play electric guitar from listening to a lot of Carlos Santana, Stevie Ray Vaughan, and B.B. King, and that's always been the kind of music that I gravitate toward.
Very few guitarists play nylon-string. They don't know how to get the sound out of them. That's something I've spent a lot of time on.
I never stop being amazed by all the different ways of playing the guitar and making it deliver a message.
I got into alternative rock in the early 80s, bands like Husker Du and The Replacements. Bob Mould's playing was a huge influence. It was very heavy with a lot of open tunings, which was great because I played in trios, so I used open tunings to get a fuller sound.
There are lots of really good guitarists, but they play with the same pedals that everybody else does. Everybody buys the same pedals, so the sounds tend to be the same. I am looking for different ways of doing that without having to spend days and weeks and months fooling around with pedals, which I don't enjoy.
I can play rhythm guitar. I know how to hold a guitar and strum it.
Growing up in Dallas, my first influences on the guitar were T-Bone Walker and Les Paul. T-Bone taught me how to play lead guitar behind my head and do the splits in 1951 when I was nine.
I don't read music; I taught myself guitar.
Jimi Hendrix is one of the main influences on why I wanted to play guitar. He really shook me. I think it was his whole style - the look and what he did with the guitar.
When I first learned guitar - when I was 14 or 15 - I had an older cousin who showed me some stuff. And he was into all these tunings. He was showing me tunings that people like David Crosby or Neil Young used - like dropped D and open D tunings.
The guitar is the easiest instrument to play and the hardest to play well.
What happens is people go, 'I want to play the guitar,' and the first thing they do is hit Google: 'How can I play this?' and the next thing you know, you've learned all these tricks, but you've never learned how to play rhythm guitar with a groove.
As a guitar player, I've been influenced by dance music - it was Crystal Method and The Prodigy back in the day. I would listen to those textures and try to approximate them on the electric guitar.
I honestly believe that you have to be able to play the guitar hard if you want to be able to get the whole spectrum of tones out of it. Since I normally play so hard, when I start picking a bit softer my tone changes completely, and that's really useful sometimes for creating a more laid-back feel.
Some of my favorite harmonics are located between frets. There are two really cool ones between the 2nd and 3rd frets that I use a lot.
To make harmonics scream, I first dump my Floyd Rose real quick, hit a harmonic with my left hand while the string is still flapping, and then use the bar to pull it up to the pitch I wanna hit.
My guitar-playing always included bass lines, melody lines, and rhythm-guitar grooves.
These days I don't look to other people with the objective of trying to steal their licks, although I've got no objections to stealing them if that seems like a good idea. I'm sure that I'm still influenced by Mark Knopfler and Eddie Van Halen as well......I can't play like Eddie Van Halen. I wish I could. I sat down to try some of those ideas and can't do it. I don't know if I could ever get any of that stuff together. Sometimes I think I should work at the guitar more.
When I started to play with my fingernails, it was not just for volume. The most important thing was giving the guitar different colors in its voices.
I'm into playing guitars, not into figuring out what else goes on with them.
I listen to other guitar players, yeah. It gives me new concepts and shows me where the instrument is going for the future and it is going some places. There are some musicians who are really putting out a good vibe with new theories. I try and keep up.
Jeff Beck is my idol .. sometimes he finds notes that I just do not have on my guitar. Frank Zappa's another one .. I loved Frank Zappa ... I do think Van Halen reinvented the guitar ... he's an excellent musician, a shrewd guitarist and as a person he's wonderful.
A lot of the time I use slide tuning for rhythm parts. I play a lot of slide in regular tuning as well as open tunings. I'm still mad about slide, there are so many ways of progressing on it.
Jeff Beck is compelled by his inner artistic drive to keep evolving the instrument. He'll use the whammy bar with the volume knob and the tone control all at the same time - creating harmonics that no human being should be able to hit.
I was never a fan of open tunings, because some people will do that and fumble around. But that's not my jam.
