I was just a punk kid, trying to get a sound out of a guitar that I couldn't get off the rack, so I built one myself ... I wanted a Gibson type of sound but with a Strat vibrato .. I went to town painting it and I put three pickups back in, but they don't work - only the rear one works

If your going to learn to play lead guitar, get an electric guitar .. it doesn't have to be an expensive one .. acoustic guitars aren't good for learning lead, because you can't play up very high on the neck and they take heavier-gauge strings which makes it hard to bend notes

I never took guitar lessons. I took classical piano lessons from the age of six when we lived in Holland.

You only have 12 notes. Do what you want with them.

I just consider myself slightly left-of-center. I'm not your average bear. I - what's the word? I'm not - normal.

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.

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