Music kept me off the streets and out of trouble and gave me something that was mine that no one could take away from me.

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.

I've had a hip replacement, I've beaten cancer, I had my hand operation, and I stopped drinking. Something inside of me just went, 'I'm done.'

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.

On 'Van Halen,' I was a young punk, and everything revolved around the fastest kid in town, gunslinger attitude. But I'd say that at the time of 'Fair Warning,' I started concentrating more on songwriting. But I guess in most people's minds I'm just a gunslinger.

Most beginners want to learn lead because they think it's cool .. consequently, they never really develop good rhythm skills .. since most of a rock guitarists time is spent playing rhythm, it's important to learn to do it well .. learning lead should come after you can play solid backup and have the sound of the chords in your head

Major third complications can be overcome by lots of alcohol.