Listening to a lot of guitar rock and roll music and feeling quite eccentric because everyone expected me to learn and develop like R&B. This kind of made me feel a little bit better, because I realized it was all the same, you know. There's no difference. It's just music.
I don't want to pooh-pooh modern pop. I appreciate that as well, but my personal favorite kind of music is guitar-based rock. I like grunge and garage bands and alternative music, but that's more my personal taste.
When the band begins to get a name for themselves, and the writers get assigned to bands, they'll hit somebody who just doesn't like that kind of music, or they love hip hop but hate guitar rock.
There's a need for music that has urgency and emotional honesty. That's why people are reintroducing themselves to guitar music - that instrument has an ability to emote.
Well, I'm known as a guitar-rock guy, you know? You're not supposed to play with synthesizers. This is not in the rulebook.
I know of some guitar-based rock bands that refuse to record anything that they can't play live. But some of the best stuff I come up with are studio-based performances - bringing out whatever accident I had in the studio and building a song around that.
At some point around '94 or '95, 'Rolling Stone' said that guitar rock was dead and that the Chemical Brothers were the future. I think that was the last issue of 'Rolling Stone' I ever bought.
I don't think I understood guitar rock as well as I probably should have. I don't think I understood bands like Led Zeppelin. In their era, everyone had such a regard for them because of them ushering in rock n' roll and this larger-than-life lifestyle. But then they had these songs that would just not stop. I didn't fully get it.
'Freebird' is an anthem, and 'Simple Man' is a very nice song.
