The one thing I do have is good ears. I don’t mean perfect pitch, but ears for picking things up. I developed my ear through piano theory, but I never had a guitar lesson in my life, except from Eric Clapton off of records.
A guitar is a very personal extension of the person playing it. You have to be emotionally and spiritually connected to your instrument. I’m very brutal on my instruments, but not all the time.
Actually, if I could deliberately sit down and write a pop hit, all my songs would be pop hits! Let’s put it this way. I play what I like to hear. And sometimes I like to hear something poppy, and sometimes I don’t.
You know, most people, they want to go to Hollywood. They want to be a star. They want to be a rock star. That thought never entered any of our minds, the Van Halen family.
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.
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.
It’s all about sound. It’s that simple. Wireless is wireless, and it’s digital. Hopefully somewhere along the line somebody will add more ones to the zeros. When digital first started, I swear I could hear the gap between the ones and the zeros.
There’s a plaque on our wall that says we’ve sold over 65 million albums, and I don’t feel I’ve accomplished anything. I feel like I’m just getting started.
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