You shouldn't even be writing this story if you haven't heard me play live. You can't write with the passion you receive until you see a Dick Dale concert.
Lenny Breau is one of the true geniuses of the guitar. I suppose he is a musician's musician. His knowledge of the instrument and the music is so vast, and I think that's what knocks people out about him. But he's such a tasty player too. I think if Chopin had played guitar, he would have sounded like Lenny Breau.
I suppose ultimately I'm interested in music. I'm a musician. I'm not a gunslinger. That's the difference between what I do and what a lot of guitar heroes do.
There's so many players that I love and admire. Joe Satriani, Steve Vai, John Petrucci, Mike Landau, Robben Ford, Lee Ritenour, Jay Graydon, John Scofield, Warren Haynes - the list goes on and on.
Running my hands really fast up and down the fretboard... I mean, anybody can do that. It's the Guitar Olympics, and I can't think of anything more pointless.
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. There is no way I would play guitar like a tour de force like I did in Led Zeppelin.
I have seen Tommy Emanuel play; my wife and I went to see him and he just melted my face off. How do you play guitar like that? There are so many people that play at a ridiculous level and I sit there watching them and I'm like, 'Wow, wish I could do that.'
Guitar solos, to me, should be a really articulate way to make fun of guitar solos.
I think I had heard Al Di Meola on the radio when I was a kid, that acoustic record, 'Friday Night In San Francisco,' with Paco de Lucía and John McLaughlin. His picking was unbelievable. I thought it was incredible.
I'm a really big fan of Andy McKee - I think he's an amazing acoustic guitar player, and he's taken the torch from where Michael Hedges left off.
As far as being a 'player's player,' you've only got to go to Nashville or Argentina and you can forget about it. The world is full of amazing guitar players, and you know it, and I know it...it's a humbling experience.
So everybody is trying to play like Eddie Van Halen. I think it's rubbish. I think Eddie's great, but everyone's trying to do what he does and it doesn't make for a lot of interesting music.
Someone like Allan Holdsworth sometimes plays the wackiest things, but does it with panache, such taste.
Listen to the great guitarists of the Fifties. They didn't do that nasty sort of industrial distortion. They played musical compositions as solos - Scotty Moore, Cliff Gallup, Django Reinhardt. There wasn't a bad note in any of those solos. I listened to that and stayed with those rules.
When I was in high school, there were these British blues-rock-type bands with really good guitar players that would jam on one song for half an hour. And as much as I was amazed by some of those guitar players, seeing them prompted me to make a note that that's not something I could do.
Jimi Hendrix is the greatest guitar player in the world... a guy who mastered that instrument. It was talking when he played. And when he did a solo, he made the guitar cry - or made it sound like it was coming from the devil's amplifier.
I admire Eddie Van Halen and Steve Lukather, but they might blow me away quite easily if we were to jam together.
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.
Seriously, though, I think the only musical term that's ever put a bee in my bonnet is 'shred.' I tried to peddle the term 'Terrifying Guitar' to the world, but it just didn't stick. Now we've got 'shred.'
Half the bands I guarantee wouldn't at this point want Nuno to open for them.
It's insane for me to say this, but I've never been in a room with anyone that's more talented on the electric guitar than Brendan O'Brien.
'Beck-Ola' is a weird album.
I didn't want to fall into the trap of competing with all these other great guitar players. I just want to sidestep the whole thing and get out of the race.
In death metal, a lot of guys are Eddie Van Halen disciples, but they take his style to really expressionistic places. It's a real pleasure for me to hear people pushing their craft.
