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?

Before the operation on my left hand I wasn't able to stretch my fingers open all the way. I've never had very big hands, but I could do the splits with them. Eventually I couldn't any more. I had a twisted tendon in my little finger that prevented me from being able to stretch.

I can't read music. Instead, I'd do stuff inside the piano, do harmonics and all kinds of crazy things. They used to put me in these annual piano contests down at Long Beach City College, and two years in a row, I won first prize - out of like 5,000 kids!

I'm just a normal schmo like anyone else.

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.

Sometimes I just want to lick David Lee Roth in the nuts

Eventually you'll take the phrases and rhythm patterns you've copped and begin to put your own mark on them