I was more influenced by players like Randy Rhoads and Eddie Van Halen than by the guys in southern rock bands.
I still think the best metal bands have a blues feel. The first Black Sabbath album is kind of a bludgeoning of blues. Deep Purple also started out as a blues band.
Guitar Player Magazine says Dick Dale is the father of Heavy Metal, blowing up 48 amplifiers, creating the first power amplifier.
Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck made me an Anglophile. I listened to English and Irish artists as a kid, and they were way louder, heavier, and faster than the traditional blues that I was listening to.
I got into alternative rock in the early 80s, bands like Husker Du and The Replacements. Bob Mould's playing was a huge influence. It was very heavy with a lot of open tunings, which was great because I played in trios, so I used open tunings to get a fuller sound.
Pete Townshend is one of my greatest influences. More than any other guitarist, he taught me how to play rhythm guitar and demonstrated its importance, particularly in a three-piece band.
We're definitely a metal band. We push a lot of boundaries. But at the core we're a metal band.
I was a kid that grew up listening to The Beatles and The Stones and Jimmy Page and Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck, and I wanted all of that in there. But at the same time, a large part of my playing is Tony Iommi and Billy Gibbons. I'm just a sum total of all of the guitar players that I think were really cool.
A lot of the 'Back In Black' stuff is really challenging.
Hard rock for me is AC/DC, Def Leppard, Tesla, Kiss. Metal tends to be louder, ruder, darker, like Judas Priest, Slayer, Iron Maiden.
I was always very into heavy metal, and heavy metal is full of emotion and extremes, and I think that's the same in dance music.
To me, Sabbath was always JUSt a really heavy blues band. That s all we were. We just took those blues roots and made them heavier.
What I did with Slash and the Conspirators was a very different kind of music. Genre-wise, it is a step in a different direction.
I am a closet metal fan.
I wanted to get a guitar [when I was 13] so I could play punk songs because kid taught me power chords at summer camp. He was like, "You could play all punk songs if you just learn this chord and just move it around on the guitar".
The Who on record were dynamic. Roger Daltrey's delivery allowed vulnerability without weakness; doubt and confusion, but no plea for sympathy.
I was interested in the electric guitar even before I knew the difference between electric and acoustic. The electric guitar seemed to be a totally fascinating plank of wood with knobs and switches on it. I just had to have one.
I was really into Black Sabbath, but heavy guitars can really be very limiting, it's a great frequency and it's great fun to listen to but on the other hand, musically you can do a lot more without it.
For me, I'm way more at home in heavy metal than I am in classical music.
We tried our best for so long to make the heaviest record we could make.
I don't think there's any music that you hear on the radio today that would be possible without Jimi Hendrix. Rock, blues-rock, heavy metal, any guitar stuff when you get right down to it - Jimi did it. He's certainly the guy who basically invented the blues-rock genre for guitar players.
The first time I heard Kiss, I knew that was the type of music I was attracted to.
I am the Great White Buffalo and I play an American-made Gibson guitar that can blow your head clean off at 100 paces.
Pighammer' is my pure vision of what I want to do, but at the same time, if you like Static-X, you will love 'Pighammer.'
Back in the old days, we were often compared to Led Zeppelin. If we did something with harmony, it was the Beach Hoys. Something heavy was Led Zeppelin.
