I do not worship the devil. But magic does intrigue me. Magic of all kinds. I bought Crowley’s house to go up and write in. The thing is, I just never get up that way. Friends live there now.
My guitar style was developed during that 10-year period. That’s me. That’s the way I play, and I don’t wish to play any other way. Our own individual identities are firmly stamped on this album.
Sometimes, I must admit, I’d like to have a second guitarist onstage with me, but it wouldn’t look right. I’d like to play for another 20 years, but I don’t know. I just can’t see it happening. I don’t know why. It’s a certain foreboding. A funny feeling. Vultures.
My vocation is more in composition really than anything else – building up harmonies using the guitar, orchestrating the guitar like an army, a guitar army.
I don’t know whether I’ll reach 40. I don’t know whether I’ll reach 35. I can’t be sure about that. I am bloody serious. I am very, very serious. I didn’t think I’d make 30.
Once I got a guitar that was relatively user-friendly, but not super-duper easy, I really came on as a guitarist, at that point. It helped. It was a super-expensive guitar either, but something needs to steer you a bit, if you’re playing an instrument that is really hard.
I’m still terrified of flying. I really have to get drunk to fly. I’ve found that I’ve developed fears I never had before… fears of heights, claustrophobia only in cities, though, never in the country.
The idea of a hypnotic riff as the prime mover of a piece of music has been around for a long time, whether you’re talking about the Delta blues or music from Middle Eastern and African cultures.
The gut-strung guitar, the classical guitar, that is a whole different world on its own. When you think what the guitar can do and what every individual player does with a guitar, everyone has their own identity coming through the guitar.
