I mean, what 16-year-old is going to listen to Doc Watson?

I don't think there is a musician today that hasn't been affected by Elvis' music. His definitive years - 1954-57 - can only be described as rock's cornerstone. He was the original cool.

To me, rockabilly music paralleled punk's energy and feeling, but the players were much better.

Since the big band started I'm just always swamped with movies and things. It certainly pays the bills and it's very satisfying, because I get to write all these big charts and all this crazy music.

With the Stray Cats at least, we really took the music somewhere else. First, we wrote our own songs. That's a real weak point in modern classics if you do rockabilly or blues.

I put a metronome up to all the songs, and I tried to really keep it true to the original tempos.

It's really funny, I think to myself... I've got my same guitar and amp, it's just a bigger room now! Some things don't change.