I was more influenced by players like Randy Rhoads and Eddie Van Halen than by the guys in southern rock bands.
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.
There was a guitar that my uncle owned and never learnt to play. He sold it to my dad, and when I heard 'Layla', that was the tune that really grabbed me. I said to my dad, 'Wait, there's a guitar, right?'
Mention Hubert Sumlin, as well, because Hubert's a great man, and again, you know, I don't play the guitar very good, but when I'm playing this kind of music, I always have him in my mind. I wish I could play like Hubert.
T-Bone Walker was a big influence on just about every guitar player around.
As a guitar player, I've been influenced by dance music - it was Crystal Method and The Prodigy back in the day. I would listen to those textures and try to approximate them on the electric guitar.
I can't deny that Eric Clapton's and Eddie Van Halen's lead stuff has influenced a stack of people, but for me, it's the rhythm thing that's way more impressive and important to a band.
All the time I was playing the flute, the lines, the solos, the riffs, the construction, were based on my guitar skills. I did not play the flute to exploit its natural faculties, but I used it as a surrogate guitar.
If you make rock music with guitars in it, the Radiohead comparison is inevitable.
It's been neat to find out different writing strategies. I've been in the room with so many different writers. Sometimes, you write with tracks, and other times, with acoustic guitars. That's been really a cool thing, because it brings out different lyrics with you.
The guitar influence that affected my songwriting came from the New Wave of British Heavy Metal.
The reason I wanted to play guitar was because I saw Buddy Holly and then our own homegrown Shadows on TV in 1957 or '58. I wanted to learn to play guitar so I could do what they did and be in a band.
Bowie's 'Hunky Dory' influenced me. 'Ziggy Stardust' influenced Johnny Ramone a lot, especially his guitar parts.
When I started, all I wanted to do was play like Chuck (Berry)
Marc Bolan had inspired so many people to pick up a guitar and join a band.
I was going out dancing in clubs around New York, and that helped create 'Supermassive Black Hole.' Franz Ferdinand would have done it very well with that dance-type beat going on mixed with alternative guitar, and I've always wanted to find that.
A Strat was a thing of wonder .. when I was 14 or 15, the Shadows were a big influence, and they had the first Strats that came to England. I like to play all kinds of guitars, but I wasn't getting the sound I really wanted until I got a Stratocaster
I always knew I was going to make a record called 'The Foundling.' Since I picked up a guitar, I knew it.
As for the first guitar I actually bought, I believe it was a Cherry Red Kramer! I think I bought it because Eddie Van Halen played Kramer, and I remember it had a Rockinger tremolo on it.
I've been playing for aeons now, but way, way back, I remember Eddie Van Halen came out, and I loved his playing. He was amazing. But then everyone started copying his guitars with Floyds, and I didn't.
I learned how to play guitar by playing along to Jane's Addiction records and Smashing Pumpkins records, things you can totally hear if you listen to my guitar.
Having pop sensibilities from my past and also being a lead blues and sort of rock guitarist allowed me to bring that kind of beachy rock groove.
Charley Patton is the original inspiration. I didn't play anything when I was a kid. Then, when I was 20, I went into my mam's bedroom because she had a double mirror, and I wanted to see what the back of my hair was doing. She had an alarm-clock radio, and it came on with this old guy moaning and hollering, playing this strange guitar.
My stepfather had an electric guitar. He went to his pawn store one day to get a guitar and an amp, and I couldn't understand what I was hearing. All afternoon, I just sat against the amp and let it reverberate through me. Something must have stuck.
Hendrix was the bass player for Little Richard. We were both left-handed, but we would use a right-handed guitar held upside down and backwards. He developed my slides and my riffs. In fact he used to say, and this is documented, 'I patterned my style after Dick Dale.'
