But then there was Hendrix, man. Jimi was really the last cat to freak me. Jimi was playing all the stuff I had in my head. I couldn't believe it, when I first heard him. Man, no one can ever do what he did with a guitar. No one can ever take his place.
For me, the original Guns N' Roses is the embodiment of a certain kind of chemistry that really couldn't be duplicated.
If anyone has listened to my stuff over the years, they know I tend not to do the same thing twice.
I feel like I'm just trying to pave my own lane and just kind of make my own sound.
I think that all my albums are different enough where I don't feel like I did this the last time.
I think that the idea of having a different approach to every single one of my albums is so exciting to me. I never want to make the same record twice. Why do it? What's the point?
I never try and sound like Sabbath.
The people who go get an LL album want to hear LL. They don't want to hear LL trying to sound like DMX or whoever else is out there. That's not what they want to hear from me, because if they want to hear that they can go get the real thing.
When I listen to Amy Winehouse, I believe that her heart and soul is in the music, or if I listen to other British artists like Duffy or Estelle. The aesthetic of it is different, and it's my point of view. It's not anything formulaic.
I don't think I sound like Janis Joplin. I'm a woman with a raspy voice.
There's a certain missing feeling, a void out there that I'm more than happy to fill. Without criticizing what's out there now, I'm just going to do El DeBarge.
I don't want to be all over the place with my style and my music, but I am experimenting.
A lot of people think that there has to be extreme continuity in an album, but if you look at my background, it's variety! I want to see some variety in an artist, I want to be entertained, I want some depth. Show me some different styles!
I'd love to work with Pharrell, but it's annoying because everyone is working with him now, and you don't want to be like, 'Oh, I want to work with you, too.' But he is the dream.
This music isn't Top 40, we really stand out from anyone.
People should listen to my music if they are into a lot of different genres and kind of want to get it all at once, if they want to listen to a story, an interesting story about somebody else.
I always want to approach records from where it feels very graspable. You know what the song's about, but it's presented to you in a way that's like, 'I never heard something like this before,' but it doesn't push you away.
I get a lot of demos sent my way, and I listen to them, and sometimes they just have something very special.
I think it's important to add a personal aspect to your music - that's what makes it authentic at the end of the day.
That's what I was trying to say when we were talking about sound. I think that every person, whether they play music or don't play music, has a sound - their own sound, that thing that you're talking about.
We've got a lot of love from Chicago, you know we've been selling out big venues in Chicago that other people don't sell out. Our music is something that's a bit different you know from what's being publicized and that's going against everything else coming out in Chicago.
Everyone has said I got my own sound.
It was a mystery to me, how the tuning was, or the style seemed to come out of nowhere, it obviously had roots in America going way back, there was nothing like it for me I'd ever seen before.
When directors tell me they want a song like one, I tell them no song should be like another. I don't listen to directors.
I'm a guitar player. I've carved out my own style of guitar music, so I don't look for inspiration with playing guitar.
