I love 'Dogman' by King's X and Living Colour's 'Stain.'
Ginger Baker was never my favorite, but he was part of the group Cream that opened the door to what we did. They were the first band to really get into improvisation. They were an absolute necessity to what came later.
Rush and guitarist Alex Lifeson are among my biggest influences.
We were into Hendrix and Cream, who were like the heaviest bands around at that time. We just wanted to be heavier than everybody else!
In sixth grade I had a band called The Blueberry Waterfall. I had borrowed a guy's Fender Jaguar and Boss Tone Fuzz, which you plugged straight into a Blackface Twin. It was a little power trio - we were actually pretty good for our age.
You can't beat two guitars, bass, and drums.
My fav band is Rush.
I used to listen to the Beatles and Stones, whereas Angus was more into the heavier stuff - Cream, Hendrix - with the lead guitar.
In The Police, in a trio situation - which I've come back to now - it's just so wide open that it does actually provide this arena where you can play with a certain freedom.
I grew up on a lot of early Beatles, DC5, Cream, Clapton, Page, Beck and Hendrix.
Rush is one of the common denominators in our band as far as a band that everybody loves and grew up with and was a big influence.
If I had to pick a favorite band of all time, it would be Rush.
Ian Gillan, Roger Glover and I wanted to be a hard rock band - we wanted to play rock and roll only.
I don't think anyone does Rush songs except for Rush.
I certainly didn't want to be in a punk rock band, because I had already been in a punk rock band. I wanted to be in a band that could do anything - like Led Zeppelin.
The one area where I'll say that Hendrix is underrated was his ability to use chord melodies. He used different inversions of chords and was able to make a three-piece band sound absolutely huge. From the moment Hendrix and the Experience came on the scene, power trios had their work cut out for them.
Buffalo Springfield had three guitar players, and we thought they were so cool. So we started doing the three-guitar thing, and people started calling us the 'guitar army' and all this stuff.
Sonic Youth played one show before we even had a drummer. It was just me, Kim, and Thurston. The lights slowly went down, and the set was just 30 minutes of feedback.
