It keeps me in touch with younger musicians who are constantly saying, ‘Have you heard this new artist, or this new guitar player?’ It keeps you reaching.
It’s harder to play drums than guitar, physically. I’m always kind of on the edge. I guess that’s how I play everything: on the edge of my ability.
There were times I used to go to parties when I was, you know, like 15-, 16-years-old, and I’d always bring my guitar, and all my friends would be like, sing one of the Smokey songs. And everything I sang was his music, and I could sound just like him.
I’ve got holes in my guitar.
Grade 9: I was too small for football, too shy for drama class, but I did have a passion for music. And so, with a mouth full of braces (and a glorious mullet), I accepted that the trombone would be a fantastic scholastic counterpart to my extracurricular loves: country music, and the guitar.
You’re better off being a brick layer if you’re going to play guitar than a sheet metal worker.
I have come to the conclusion – and I don’t know why it took me so long, but nevertheless, I’m here now – that a lot of people tell me they don’t get enough guitar on my albums. So I decided to do an album where the guitar would be the singer, playing the melody.
In the ’90s, guitar solos were dead.
I used to play a lot of cricket at the junior level. Then I did my engineering and got interested in singing and playing the guitar. Yes, I’m a musician. From music it was a step away from cinema.
All I do is sit at home and play guitar. That’s seriously what I do.
I approach playing acoustic guitar more of as a percussive instrument. It’s fragile. I don’t have a lot of finesse when it comes to my guitar playing.
I actually first picked up an ukulele before I picked up a guitar.
I think of guitar players in terms of doctors: you have the doctor for your heart, the cardiologist, then one that works on your feet, your leg. But I believe George Benson is the one that plays all over. To me, he would be the M.D. of them all.
Unless the guitar works as a color, then I don’t use it, so I haven’t been playing guitar too much lately.
Just with the basic one guitar, one piano and one vocal and an audience, I think that the intimacy comes through more. People feel much more connected to the song because there’s nothing in the way, and I actually enjoy doing that.
I had a guitar when I was 6 or 7, a plastic guitar with the Beatles’ faces on it. It would be a collector’s item now. It would fetch a hefty sum, I imagine.
I play guitar a bit. I’m trying to learn drums – I feel like I can play violin. I’ve never tried, but I just feel like I can.
My dad played guitar, and he taught me enough to play some Beatles’ songs. But primarily, I was a bookworm. I loved reading and still do. My whole family does. It was part of the family culture. Accomplished literacy was a value.
Basically, I try to treat the electric guitar like an acoustic guitar. What you have to do is attack the instrument and know that your feelings aren’t controlled by the controls of your guitar.
T-Bone Walker was a big influence on just about every guitar player around.
I destroyed a lot of guitars trying to get them to do what I wanted, but I learned something from every guitar I tore apart, and discovered even more things. Things like if the string is not straight from the bridge saddle to the nut, you’re going to have friction.
I feel like I’m just learning how to play the guitar. I mean, really learning to play the guitar.
I think guitar-wise, Eric Clapton was a big influence on me. I got to spend time around him. He’s kind of strange, mysterious, serious and he always has played such hot guitar.
Because people don’t understand what computing is about, they think they have it in the iPhone, and that illusion is as bad as the illusion that ‘Guitar Hero’ is the same as a real guitar.
I think we raised about 20,000 pounds. There was a live performance thing so we thought we’d donate the equipment for an online charity in Britain. I hated to part with my guitar, but it was for such a great cause.
Guitar is great for a certain thing, but a piano is so much more expansive.
I started playing guitar when I was in my late teens, and within two years I was starting to play shows.
I’m the gun guy, a loud guitar Dirty Harry with a ponytail.
Every time the guys were knocked out by my guitar playing and the girls were knocked out by the type of songs I did. That set us apart from the average blues band.
The bulk of my set is instrumental and you have to give yourself and the audience some relief because a performance is not about great guitar playing it’s really about entertainment.
But the guitar is my favorite, first and foremost instrument.
When I’m working on a movie, I’m in my trailer playing guitar. And then on the road, I read scripts and think of… it just keeps both fires burning. I kind of need both.
I had a series of mini-breakdowns where the public persona – this thing, this face, this person who writes this music… I would walk past that person in the mirror or listen to that person playing guitar and I didn’t know who they were.
Oh yeah, I mean, it wasn’t a very good guitar, most good guitars have got thrust rods in the necks that you can adjust or that’ll keep them in shape, you know keep them straight. This one just, well it turned into a bow and arrow after a couple of months.
I’m just a dumb guitar player, man.
I understand I’m supposed to be feminine and dainty, but I’m not. There are two sides to the coin. People are more impressed with things that I do because they almost treat you as if you’re handicapped if you’re a woman… people can be impressed that I can play a few chords on the guitar.
My daughter plays keyboard very well, and my son plays guitar, and they’re totally into music.
To me and my band, guitar riffs are what it’s all about. We know that every time we jam on a great riff, we’ve got a fighting chance of writing a great song!
My first really good guitar was a Gibson J-45.
I would walk down the hall with my guitar and play for anyone that would listen. As a young kid I was really driven and I was going to make it happen no matter what.
I noticed a lot of guitar players neglected the rhythm part of rhythm guitar and decided I would try to focus in that.
I saw the Village as a place you could escape to, to express yourself. When I first went there, I wrote and performed poetry. Then I drew portraits for a couple of years. It took a while before I thought about picking up a guitar.
I’ll always do the guitar parts since it’s my main instrument.
I was left with an urge to make the guitar sound like things it shouldn’t be able to sound like.
I don’t understand why some people will only accept a guitar if it has an instantly recognizable guitar sound. Finding ways to use the same guitar people have been using for 50 years to make sounds that no one has heard before is truly what gets me off.
Puberty hit me very hard, and I basically had no use for school once I discovered the guitar.
My dad is a huge rock n’ roll lead guitar fan.
Yes and for two reasons: one, I couldn’t find anything to imitate at the time, and secondly because what I heard on the radio didn’t bear any resemblance to what I wanted to hear on the guitar.
I played the cello from when I was ten, and then I bought a guitar from the father of some friends of mine and played that for a while. And then when I was fourteen or so, I bought a guitar – a real nice one – in Durham, North Carolina, that I worked with up until I was about twenty-five.
My dad wanted me to play when I was a kid, so I learned to play the guitar. I pursued a career in music because I love it so much and I enjoy what it does to those who hear it.
I just want to be a guy with a guitar.
There’s something about approaching universal truths with the simplicity of the acoustic guitar. You can take it anywhere, and it helps me reach listeners of all ages and walks of life.
My voice is my improvisational instrument, the melody instrument. The guitar is harmonic structure. I’m not a good enough guitarist to improvise on it.
My room is never clean. I play ‘Guitar Hero’ all the time and throw things around my room.
Playing guitar is not a beauty contest.
Guitar gigs were everywhere in the ’50s, and I started diddling around so I could keep working. Playing honky-tonk, simple stuff. I took a few gigs with an organ band that put me out front.
Puberty was very vague. I literally locked myself in a room and played guitar.
Look what venison does to a goofy guitar player from Detroit? I’m going to be 54 this year and if I had any more energy I’d scare you.
Yes, I love to play drums and bass and guitar and piano. Those are the main instruments I play. That is it.
For me it always comes down to what is a good song and I’m very old fashioned in the way that I like to make songs that have something classic about them whether you can play them with an orchestra or an electro synthesizer or an acoustic guitar.
I had a big background in listening to classical music and I started trying to compose, like I was playing the guitar but I heard an orchestra in my head.
If T-Bone Walker had been a woman, I would have asked him to marry me. I’d never heard anything like that before: single-string blues played on an electric guitar.
