After I saw Jimmy [Hendrix] play, I just went home and wondered what the f*** I was going to do with my life.

If you don't have an album or you don't have any tune, you can't start.

Can't stand it. Too many amps, too much volume, it's just flat-out ear assault. Speedy guitars leave me not feeling detached but physically upset. When you think of all the subtleties that were built into the guitar and amps for you to discover they completely cover the whole lot with a rack of effects. The guitar doesn't need that.

Things turn out better by accident sometimes. But you can't organize accidents.

There was mass hysteria in the Chess Recording Studio when I did the "Shapes of Things" solo ... they weren't expecting it, and it was just some weird mist coming from the East out of an amp.

I don't care about the rules, if I don't break the rules at least 10x every song then I'm not doing my job.

If you can make it sound exciting with a joke drum machine, you know you've got something.