“The piano is a universal instrument. If you start there, learn your theory and how to read, you can go on to any other instrument.”

Best believe that needle hurt you Best to see these true colors Than follow one of your false virtues A little secret to make you think: Why is the crazy stuff we never say, poetry in ink?

The name Van Halen, the family legacy, is going to go on long after I’m gone.

I boil the strings so they stretch.

There are really three parts to the creative process. First there is inspiration, then there is the execution, and finally there is the release.

The stainless-steel frets were a major breakthrough, because of the amount of playing and bending that I do. I have to get my guitars refretted every couple of months.

Rock stars come and go. Musicians play until they die.

I think Clapton is brilliant. He’s the only one who moved me. The only one who made me want to play the guitar.

Holdsworth is so damned good that I can’t cop anything. I can’t understand what he’s doing. I’ve got to do this [does two-hand tapping], whereas he’ll do it with one hand.

It’s always a Catch-22 situation. They hate you if you’re the same, and they hate you if you’re different.

I have selective hearing.

I’m writing, and just doing the same thing I always do.

Every song is like a kid. How can you have that many kids and have a favorite? Which one do I like to hang most with?

A good producer brings out the best in the artist he’s working with. You shouldn’t be able to listen to something and say, ‘So-and-so produced this album.

You only have 12 notes. Do what you want with them.

I’m the one in the band that said I’m not going on tour unless we do a record.

Cancer is like a cockroach. It just comes back stronger. I’m tearing apart the immune system of the cockroach and seeing how it ticks. I’ve opened up my own pathology center.

I play as many different things – piano, sax and harp parts – as I can at once. Whatever I can fit, whenever I need to.

From the classical guitar right through to the furthest electrical experiments and everything in-between, it’s amazing what the guitar can actually do. I mean, when one thinks about sounds.

Every time you pick up your guitar to play, play as if it’s the last time.

I love the voice – it’s the most perfect instrument ever heard. It’s God given.

I believe every guitar player inherently has something unique about their playing. They just have to identify what makes them different and develop it.

Voices are like fingerprints, from Cagney to Bogart. They never lost it. My voice is instrumental in categorizing me.

I speak with the Eternal through the instrument of nature, through the world’s history: I read the soul of the artist in his Apollo.

Give me a guitar and I’ll play; give me a stage and I’ll perform; give me an auditorium and I’ll fill it.