Watching a Kirk Douglas movie, 'Young Man With A Horn,' made me want to be a trumpet player.
I think somewhere in the back of my mind I've always wanted to make a whole swing album.
When The Who first started, we were playing blues, and I dug the blues and I knew what I was supposed to be playing, but I couldn't play it. I couldn't get it out. I knew what I had to play; it was in my head. I could hear the notes in my head, but I couldn't get them out on the guitar.
When I got out of high school, I was in a blues band. It was the kind of music I was interested in, and listening to, mostly because it was becoming a vehicle for a generation of guitarists - like Jeff Beck and Eric Clapton. Mike Bloomfield. And that's what I wanted to be, principally: a guitar player.
I actually have a decent singing voice, and I've never been able to sing onscreen. I'd love to do a musical.
If I could, I'd sing old French songs or American folk music, but I sure as hell can't do it as well as Mississippi John Hurt - no way in hell am I getting near that!
I've been a fan of Zombie's since the beginning. I've toured with them and have always wanted to play for them.
I wanted to be Gerry Mulligan, only, see, I didn't have any kind of technique. So I thought, well, baritone sax is kind of easier; I can manage that - except I couldn't afford a baritone, so I bought an alto, which was the same fingering.
I enjoy his concerts and OK, maybe - I can't sing, I can't dance, I can't play the guitar, but I am going to go a long way if I keep following Springsteen.
But music was never something I saw myself doing.
I haven't a great jazz band, and I don't want one.
When I was 15 or so, I made a conscious decision to try and sing with a big voice. Everybody I listened to had these big voices, and I wanted to try it. The blessing is that I could.
I dreamed of having a Gibson. I had a cheap Kent - you know, a Japanese guitar - and then a Kanora, a Japanese guitar. I borrowed a friend's Harmony for years. To have a Gibson was really, really my dream as a kid.
Once we went into the basement and learned a song, we felt successful. Then we learned two songs, and then we got a gig, and on and on - and that's the way musicians think. I don't know about other people - I mean, I don't know about all musicians either - but some are more driven than others.
I can sing, but my voice is untrained. I'd like to do a musical someday.
In the beginning of my career, I wanted to be chased by girls more than anything - that's why I got the guitar. By the time we were in ABBA, the music was the only important thing.
The experience awakened 'my tremendous musical ambition, which has never subsided to this day.
I dreamed of recording a guitar album since I started playing, but I just never felt ready. I never felt like I was the player that I wanted to be. But I had this epiphany: you're never going to feel ready.
When I was coming up in Miami, the music in the city at the time sounded completely different. I loved it, but it just wasn't the type of music I wanted to make. I wanted my wordplay to be more sophisticated. I wanted the sound to be more lush. I wanted my music to sound like who I was and aspired to be - boss.
No one else in our family was a professional musician so this took an enormous leap of faith on their part.
In so many ways, it feels the same now when I play as the very first time I picked up the instrument. There's always this sound out there that's just a little bit beyond my reach and I'm trying to get there and that just sort of keeps me going.
I booked my first studio at like 12 or 13. Somewhere in that season of my life, singing along with the radio became me wanting to be on radio, you know. And writing Langston Hughes replica poems became me wanting to write like Stevie Wonder.
If I could play drums like Patrick Carney or Taylor Hawkins, I'd be a really happy person.
What a young musician's dream, to say, "Look at those chrome drums. Look at that 22-inch ride cymbal. I'll have those." It was one of those unparalleled exciting days of your life.
I wanted to write picture music ever since I was a kid.
