It's always about the music, never about anything else.

Practice. I used to sit on the edge of my bed with a six-pack of Tuborg. My brother would go out to party and get laid, come home at 3am., and I would still be playing with myself.

It's funny, when bands or younger musicians ask me: 'So, what does it take to make it?' Well, first explain to me what you mean by 'making it': Do you want to be a rock star or do you want music to be your livelihood?

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.

The name Van Halen, the family legacy, is going to go on long after I'm gone.

Every song is like a kid. How can you have that many kids and have a favorite? Which one do I like to hang most with?

A guitar is just theoretically built wrong. Each string is an interval of fourths, and then the B string is off. Theoretically, that's not right, all the strings should be off.