Ian MacKaye Quotes

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.

As a young man growing up in that era, I was very influenced by Hendrix and took to a wah wah, and I learned how to really use one effectively as Hendrix did.

I'm a huge fan of Joe Walsh and a big James Gang fan. A lot of what I know about playing the guitar I learned from listening to him.

I started out playing guitar because Jimi Hendrix was my hero, so my roots were really based on Jimi Hendrix and his style of playing.

Marc Bolan had inspired so many people to pick up a guitar and join a band.

I've always loved the guitar. You see Jimi Hendrix playing the guitar with his teeth, and OK, you know you're never going to be able to do that, but I always wanted to play an instrument of some sort.

Richard Lloyd of Television is one of my favorite guitarists. His mentor was Jimi Hendrix when he was just 14. Jimi was always pounding everything he knew into that kid.

My dad has been playing guitar basically all his life. He's sort of who got me into rock music.

I think I always wished I could play guitar as well as Jimi Hendrix.

Hendrix was a perfect guitarist. And that's all I wanted to do as a kid. Play a guitar properly and jump around.

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.

My fourth birthday, I was given a violin, and my fifth birthday, a guitar. I didn't start to play until I saw Hendrix on TV. They showed him setting his guitar on fire and burning it for the Monterey Pop Festival.

When I started, all I wanted to do was play like Chuck (Berry)

A lot of kids bought guitars and started playing rock'n'roll because of us.

I like guitar. It just turned out that it's the instrument I learned to play. I have a lot of respect for it and I'm learning more and more everyday.

What Jimmy Page did was pretty inspiring for guitar players. He married a lot of acoustic elements into hard rock. The kind of chords he used were very left of center, with a lot of dissonance - I absorbed that like a sponge. It's all over the music I write, always.

It's like being in a trance, like I get this electric current through my fingertips. Sometimes I shake. People say I look like Hendrix when I'm about to rip a solo because I move my shoulders like he does and do the chewing.

I worked with George Harrison - who was the reason I started playing guitar.

In my opinion, Slash is probably one of the last of the iconic guitar players carrying the torch of what it's really all about.

One of the key guitars in my career has been an early-Seventies Fender Telecaster Deluxe that I had before Sonic Youth started and that I played pretty much throughout Sonic Youth.

British rock & roll became the gospel for American kids like me.

As far as actual playing, Clapton - by far - is my biggest influence, and you can tuck Jeff Beck underneath that.

I got a toy guitar at a fundraiser and was trying to write songs with it that were ridiculous. After a week, my parents bought me a real acoustic guitar, and I started taking guitar lessons.

If it wasn't for guys like Gary Moore, I wouldn't exist. He not only proved that the blues could rock but it could draw a crowd as well. All of which made a huge impression on me.

I was interested in music since I was 14 years old. What really got me started was the first Led Zeppelin album... absolutely.