“I’m just a guitarist in a kick-ass rock and roll band. What more could I ask for?”

I’m just a normal schmo like anyone else.

I’ve had a hip replacement, I’ve beaten cancer, I had my hand operation, and I stopped drinking. Something inside of me just went, ‘I’m done.’

Everything comes to me while I’m sitting on the pot.

I grew up on a lot of early Beatles, DC5, Cream, Clapton, Page, Beck and Hendrix.

Nirvana was huge, but it didn’t appeal to everyone.

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.

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.

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 had a guitar when I was 6 or 7, a plastic guitar with the Beatles’ faces on it. It would be a collector’s item now. It would fetch a hefty sum, I imagine.

I came to NAMM once and saw this guitar that self-tuned, and I thought, ‘Wow, this is the future!’ And I’ve never seen it again.

When I was 11, I decided to start rapping, playing guitar, and writing songs. Everything really blossomed from there.

Someone told me the smile on my face gets bigger when I play the guitar.

There were basically three themes. One was the sun theme which is the guitar when he’d get sun on his leg and it comes again in the end. And there’s of course the lullaby which Dido sang, “If I Rise.” And then there’s this driving guitar which is the motivation theme.

I taught myself how to play the guitar, I taught myself how to play the drums, and I kind of fake doing both of them. But drumming comes more natural to me, and it just feels better.

Technically, I’m not a guitar player, all I play is truth and emotion.

The time I burned my guitar it was like a sacrifice. You sacrifice the things you love. I love my guitar.