Playing guitar is like telling the truth.

Jazz is the big brother of the blues. If a guy's playing blues like we play, he's in high school. When he starts playing jazz it's like going on to college, to a school of higher learning.

It just seemed to me that the way I played was nice. I could hear it myself.

I'd rather be B.B. King. That's the way I started. Let the heavy metal guys play heavy metal, let the others play the other ... I try to do what I do better, not get away from it.

I don’t like to feel that I owe anything. I like to feel that I pay my own way, no free lunch.

I did several shows with Jimi Hendrix, that's when I got to know him better, I knew of him, I met him [when he was playing] with Little Richard... And he was kind of quiet, shy, he didn't open up too much, but there were questions as we all ask each other. You know, "how do you do this" and "why do you do that..." We had very small discussions on things like that. And he was very polite, I thought [he was] a very nice guy.

I wanted to connect my guitar to human emotions.