When you're up on stage, especially being a female guitar player in a male-dominated field, if they just see you're into it, and it's your passion, and you're just giving it your all - it's not, like, an accessory - then it's all cool.
The very first concert I ever went to on my own was actually Rory Gallagher. In a one-month period in 1973 or '74, I saw him, Thin Lizzy and the Rolling Stones. I wasn't really a big Rory Gallagher fan, but I thought his guitar playing was fabulous. But Thin Lizzy, they were fabulous.
My brother is an excellent songwriter, and I play guitar and drums.
I pull a lot of the stuff that I play off the rhythm tracks - and Keith Richards has been one of the main contributors to my inspirational playing.
Very few guitarists play nylon-string. They don't know how to get the sound out of them. That's something I've spent a lot of time on.
I didn't touch a guitar until I was 20.
I got a guitar when I was six and, instead of learning other people's songs, started to try to write my own, even at that young age.
I try to become a singer. The guitar has always been abused with distortion units and funny sorts of effects, but when you don't do that and just let the genuine sound come through, there's a whole magic there.
Joe Walsh is somebody who... he's a writer, obviously, and he's a singer-songwriter, whatever, but at the end of the day, when it comes to the Eagles, he's there to play guitar, and he's there to supply whatever is needed for that band, and that is what I feel with Metallica.
I played guitar all my life, all the way through the Yardbirds, but I knew that for me this was going to be a guitar vehicle, because that's what I wanted it to be.
I wasn't thriving socially, so I stayed in my room and played guitar all the time.
I listened to a battery radio, old country and pop stuff. Because I was singing all the time, my dad bought me a $7.50 guitar.
I was always into classical music and opera because I played the piano as I went through school and was very interested in Andrew Lloyd Webber musicals and stuff like that. That changed into heavy metal at around the age of 14 or 13, and I dropped the piano and started to play the guitar.
I've played in pipe bands in Scotland, and I've always played guitars and drums and stuff.
As a kid I used to pretend I was John Denver, of all people, and play the guitar and sing Take Me Home, Country Roads.
I don't want to be a lead player. I don't want to shred and play fast licks. I just want to be the best rhythm section ever.
I played guitar. I've always considered myself an actor, but I wasn't making a living as an actor. So I was in a couple of folk groups that managed to keep me in underwear and burritos.
I'm not committed to putting myself up for a blues guitarist, even though I love playing the blues.
The electric guitar was a big step for me, but I didn't spend a lot of time trying to adjust. It wasn't like, 'Hey, little lady, come strap on this here big guitar.' We took it in steps as much as possible.
My first really good guitar was a Gibson J-45.
There's a sound with Motley Crue, and it comes with Vince's voice, which is such an important part of the show, and Mick's guitar. And the way Tommy and me play together is an important part of it.
I've been singing since I could talk. I started playing the piano when I was about 5 or 6. I picked up the guitar on my 20th birthday.
When I was 12, I wanted to learn how to play the guitar, and I found a chord book in a shop, and I stuffed it down my trousers. And that's how I learned to play the guitar.
I grew up in a really rural town, Stratford, Ontario, with 30,000 people. There's a big festival thrown in the town. A lot of people travel from all over the world to see it, and growing up, I actually used to busk on the street. I'd play my guitar, sing, and people would throw money in the case.
Playing guitar was a calling, but I never realized that it was going to be a career. It was just something I did out of love.
