The blues appealed to me, but so did rock. The early rockabilly guitarists like Cliff Gallup and Scotty Moore were just as important to me as the blues guitarists.
There’s such a wealth of arts and styles within the guitar… flamenco, jazz, rock, blues. You name it, it’s there. In the early days my dream was to fuse all those styles. Now composing has become just as important.
There’s music that can affect people in their lives, and they will always relate to the point that they heard it and experienced it, either if you’re playing it or you’re receptive, as an audience.
There’s so much that can be done on the guitar. And that’s what is so good about the guitar – everyone can really enjoy themselves on it and have a good time, which is what it’s all about.
I played guitar all my life, all the way through the Yardbirds, but I knew that for me this was going to be a guitar vehicle, because that’s what I wanted it to be.
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.
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.
