The first thing I remember hearing was just the dance music that was in the charts when I was growing up. I don't remember many of the names of specific tracks - they were just kind of early acid house things.
I first started to sing when I started to talk. As soon as I could form words and sounds together, I was singing.
Very old music is, like, 11th century in my mind. That's very old.
When I began playing the lute, in 1950 there were not too many lutenists around. I had to work hard, writing out music in museums and libraries. It was before the days of photocopying. And I had just picked up the lute, adapted my guitar technique to it and went from there.
My favorite bands were Emerson, Lake & Palmer, Jethro Tull, Uriah Heep, Grand Funk Railroad. If you listen to some of my early music, you can hear it.
I personally am into the minstrel technique - if I hear someone playing a lute or playing a crumhorn, it just moves me. I don't know why.
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.
I always sang when I was little and my father, who was a great influence on me, also had a wonderful voice. He and my mother really encouraged me to sing and play the piano. They were always very supportive.
The first big stars, Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey, you know, these were gigantic stars. I even wonder sometimes whether all music actually comes from women, whether the first glimmering of music is a mother soothing a baby.
I think I'm fascinated with history and - just in general. And I'm always interested in how did - how did this come to be? Why is this the way it is? And even singing classical voice, I quickly became more and more interested with early music, baroque voice. And that became an obsession to me - just figuring out how - who are the ancestors of whatever it is.
So, maybe you don't see blues so much in Styx's music but it is definitely part of Tommy's early music.
I was listening to music long before rock 'n roll.
I sang do-wop on the street corner before it was called do-wop.
The sound of the harpsichord resembles that of a bird-cage played with toasting-forks.
I took piano lessons when I was a little kid, but even before that, you're singing in the classroom and wherever. Gosh, children are always singing. But I took music lessons, some choir and things like that at school. I learned how to play the guitar when I was about 13... ancient history.
My first proper 'Here's your guitar, Joseph' was a 1981 Chiquita, one of those Erlewine travel guitars. And it was good for a four-year-old because it was small.
Early music in all kinds of movements is always a mixture of innocence and ambition.
You know the drum was the first instrument besides the human voice.
My first record I owned was by Les Paul.
In its beginnings, music was merely chamber music, meant to be listened to in a small space by a small audience.
I could hum Beatles songs before I could talk - not very well, but sort of.
I've always had a deep passion for a lot of early electronic and sampled music.
I was drawn to music from a super early age. At school, my ego co-opted it to some degree and I would use it to gain some sort of social credibility.
As a matter of fact, I personally would much rather hear Perotin than Mozart.
I was passionately interested in Elizabethan history at school, so it was natural for me as a musician to take interest in the music of that period.
