You can't buy time. Everything, for me, seems to be a race against time. Especially musically.

If you wanted to chart new territories and head off over the horizon, you had to make sure you weren't overly influenced by what others were doing ... so it didn't matter what other bands were doing ... we did what we were doing.

If I ever really felt depressed, I would just start putting on all my old records that I played as a kid, because the whole thing that really lifted me then still lifted me during those other times. It was good medicine for me, and it still does that for me when I put something on. Isn't it wonderful that we've got all that good medicine? I think it's got to be all part of our DNA, this mass communication through music. That's what it is. It's got to be, hasn't it? Music is the one thing that has been consistently there for me. It hasn't let me down.

There's such a wealth of arts and styles within the guitar... flamenco, jazz, rock, blues... you name it, it's there. In the early days my dream was to fuse all those styles. Now composing has become just as important.

But if you want me to knock Kingdom Come, all I will say is that I heard the guitarist said he'd never heard my playing, and I'd defy any guitarist in American not to have heard Led Zeppelin.

I'm pretty optimistic about the future of rock... it will be back to composition as in classical music or jazz.

I always thought the good thing about the guitar was that they didn't teach it in school.