I'm blessed with a good pair of ears. That's how I fooled my piano teacher. I'd watch his fingers and I'd listen to it, and I just kind of basically learned it by myself.

I went to the zoo one day and saw a chimp playing with a beat-up acoustic guitar in a way I had never seen before. Instead of using the pick the chimp was banging the neck and tapping it with its fingers. I knew the chimp was on to something so I practiced this new technique in my room for hours until I'd perfected it.

When I was growing up and listening to bands like the Dave Clark Five, the groove was what initially got me going. I really like that funky, heavy groove.

The piano is a universal instrument. If you start there, learn your theory and how to read, you can go on to any other instrument.

I started doing all kinds of weird stuff on the guitar, which became part of my playing. I started doing harmonics and tapping on the guitar and pulling off strings and doing all this weird stuff that no one had ever done before.

I was trying to take the band in a direction that I thought was appropriate, and Roth was trying to take the band in more of a Las Vegas direction. And there he is.

Obviously you have to have rhythm. If you have rhythm, then you can play anything you need. If you have rhythm and you love music, then play and play and play until you get to where you want to get. If you can pay the rent, great. If you can't, then you'd better be having fun.