Later in high school, I met Hillel Slovak, who was the original guitar player of the Chili Peppers, and we became really close. We had a band, and we didn't like the bass player, so I started playing bass, and I got a bass two weeks later.
That's the nice thing about being in Mr. Big, is I'm not only the guitar player. I'm the background singer, and so I get to do both of those things. Sometimes we even switch instruments and I get to be the drummer.
I was playing drums in church when I was six. Then I picked up the piano when I was 11 or 12.
I've been playing the viola since I was 6 years old, and then I decided to switch it up a bit, so I've been playing the violin since I was 11. I started playing the piano when I was 11, and I started playing the guitar when I was 10.
I have a piano and a guitar, and I tend to switch back and forth between those two instruments to help me get inspired.
I think some bands thrive on the idea of changing instruments. When they're off their real instrument, the ability to go very far from the original idea is reduced.
I started on drums when I was 13 and played them for two years. Then I went to guitar for a year, played keyboards for a year and a half, and went back to guitar.
A lot of times, I played bass on songs. Gene plays guitar on some songs.
I started off with violin, then I started learning guitar, then I went to piano. But I self-taught piano just because I enjoyed it. I've always really enjoyed music.
I love building a song up from nothing and jumping from one instrument to another.
I love five-string banjo. On an electric guitar, let's say a two-hour show, it starts getting heavy right across the neck and shoulders. And I like to be able to flip it off and grab the fiddle, and that's just the way I do it.
In order to make my solo shows as interesting as possible, I moved songs onto very different instruments so that I was moving instruments quite a lot during the set.
In the studio, I'm always throwing people on different instruments.
I was a drummer and I played the guitar.
I told my father I wanted to play the banjo, and so he saved the money and got ready to give me a banjo for my next birthday, and between that time and my birthday, I lost interest in the banjo and was playing guitar.
I've played the violin since I was seven but stopped because there was a stage when it became 'uncool'. I was listening to Nirvana and wanted to play the guitar, so I ditched the violin.
