Two of my favorite bands, Blackberry Smoke and Black Stone Cherry, I just think both of those bands are a good new progressive kind of Southern Rock that's a little different than us but still has a rootsy thing going on.
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.
To me, prog-rock is ELP. And for me personally, that stuff is really boring.
My experience with playing in odd time signatures was progressive rock and learning King Crimson songs as a kid coming up and maybe learning Pink Floyd, 'Money,' that kind of thing.
Rock and jazz came together in a very powerful way on 'Barabajagal.'
GN'R was five guys who were all into different things. I liked pop and disco, Izzy was into New York rock, Slash loved Aerosmith and Led Zeppelin, Axl was into Genesis and Elton John, and Duff was a punk rocker. We all blended that stuff together.
The justification for rap rock seems to be that if you take really bad rock and put really bad rap over it, the result is somehow good, provided the raps are barked by an overweight white guy with cropped hair and forearm tattoos.
The first time I heard the Mars Volta, I had a feeling I was experiencing something that people must have felt when they first heard Led Zeppelin. They have the same kind of power.
What I wanted to do in rock 'n roll was merge poetry with sonic scapes, and the two people who had contributed so much to that were Jimi Hendrix and Jim Morrison.
For those who are familiar with my work, 'Soulfire' is a return to how most people identify me, which is that soul-meets-rock thing.
I'm not interested in a rock/jazz fusion.
