My chosen instrument is guitar and, fortunately, I'm able to muddle through that. I can play guitar to the point where I can express myself artistically.

The Beatles had some juice when it came to distortion, but Clapton was finally able to break through those early studio engineers' fear of overloading. He defined the sound that guitarists spend the rest of their lives trying to get.

Over the years, when you're in a band with a catalog like Aerosmith's, you accumulate a lot of instruments to duplicate those songs.

I think we're just a garage band that got lucky. It's the enthusiasm from the audience that keeps it going.

I think that's really important, that kids get exposed to music as soon as they can - not necessarily to become musicians, but at least have an outlet. It's an art form that's easily accessible to young ears.

If you take your last album & try to copy it, then thats sure to hell the way to stagnation. And that makes me bored...and if I'm bored then the music is boring and so are the band!

I'm glad that I never ended up killing myself, though I came close more times than I would like to admit.