I wanted to be in Rolling Stone number two with a tomorrow feel to it, like an experimental Rolling Stones with Jagger singing.

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.

Some are skeptical. My mom thought the guitar was going to fizzle out in two weeks, that it was just a fad-and that was in 1958.

I do hear snippets on the radio. I do hear a little bit of me, sometimes great chunks of me. But I have to take that as a compliment; there's no way you can get sour grapes about that. But if somebody starts taking your whole new thing lock, stock, and barrel, and do their own version of it before you do it, that's not on.

I play purely from the heart, y'know, and so if it doesn't work the first couple of hours, forget it.

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.

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