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. Music education and families are dealing with the economic times, and I wanted to help them. If I can help a kid discover a liking, or even a passion for music in their life, then that's a wonderful thing.

A guitar is a very personal extension of the person playing it. You have to be emotionally and spiritually connected to your instrument. I'm very brutal on my instruments, but not all the time.

I'll be making music 'til the day I die. I've done all kinds of stuff, and more is coming.

It's always a Catch-22 situation. They hate you if you're the same, and they hate you if you're different.

David Lee Roth had the idea that if you covered a successful song, you were half way home. C'mon - Van Halen doing 'Dancing in the Streets'? It was stupid. I started feeling like I would rather bomb playing my own songs than be successful playing someone else's music.

We're musicians. We make music for a living. It's that simple. Nothing else matters.

I wanted a Gibson type sound, but with a Strat vibrato ... I bought a body from Charvel for $50.00 and a neck for $80.00 - I slapped it together, put an old Gibson PAF in it and painted it up with the stripes