The advice I am giving always to all my students is above all to study the music profoundly... music is like the ocean, and the instruments are little or bigger islands, very beautiful for the flowers and trees.
I never thought 'Stairway to Heaven' was a long song. I loved how there was this part and then there was another part that was completely different.
The simplest beats, on what rock music or any music has been formed on, can be the toughest beats to execute and perform, because it's really easy to not respect a simple 4/4 beat, because people always want to play fast.
What I don't like is taking it to extremes and making all these intellectualizations about what basically is simple music. It's simple stream-of-consciousness stuff in my songs. What I'm trying to get across is misinterpreted.
On first listening, Joni Mitchell's 'Court And Spark,' the first truly great pop album of 1974, sounds surprisingly light; by the third or fourth listening, it reveals its underlying tensions.
I like that Metallica has found a way to have these non-pedestrian arrangements but then the vocal melody is strong and intense. I've always appreciated that as a fan.
However, very recently I have come to an understanding that complex music is not necessarily pleasant.
I'm not technical. When I listen to music, I gravitate more toward the sonic aspect of it. The technical stuff of it, I get bored with it. These long solos? OK, already. You know your scales, big deal. I know it, too, but I don't want to do that.
My first two records are so simply constructed. The reason isn't because I wanted to make simple music. It's because I don't really have the chops.
I think Blank Generation holds up pretty well. You listen to that with headphones and there's a lot going on there with the guitars- it's the product of a lot of fighting.
A lot of the 'Back In Black' stuff is really challenging.
Probably my two biggest musical influences were the Everly Brothers and the Beatles, in chronological order. Both of them have had a very simple-sounding musical style that's actually quite complex as far as popular songs are concerned.
One chord is fine. Two chords are pushing it. Three chords and you're into jazz.
Maybe it is true what they say, that playing these Chuck Berry songs is easy. But try singing them. The words come out hard, like bullets.
I'd say that it's important for music to be there that gives you a challenge, that rearranges things in your head.
People do dismiss ambient music, don't they? They call it 'easy listening,' as if to suggest that it should be hard to listen to.
I like songs that have lots of different parts in them, an intro, an outro and a bridge.
Music is like comedy in that you can enjoy a very - for want of abetter word - sophisticated classical piece as much as you enjoy something that's very simple pop.
Guitars are like women. You'll never get them totally right.
When we were recording, sometimes I wondered if what we were doing would even be possible to play live.
I do like how the music can be misunderstood.
A chorus is not easy.
Music is not simply an orchestration of something, but it's also not something as trivial as honesty.
I was a huge fan of this band called Sparks. It was a pretty good inauguration to music, since their music is quite complex.
Mike Patton is a genius... It is definitely the hardest music I've ever played.
