If a guitar is too easy for me to play, it makes me too laid back. I like to battle with my guitar.

The same sensations that you get in heavy metal are in horror movies. Heavy metal sounds evil and horror movies are evil, ha ha!

I didn't want to fall into the trap of competing with all these other great guitar players. I just want to sidestep the whole thing and get out of the race.

Jeff Beck is one of my heroes and has been since I first picked up a guitar.

I'm very fortunate to be doing the thing I do best, which is play guitar. There aren't many other things I could do.

Guitar playing is both extremely easy for me and extremely difficult for me at the same time.

Metallica is a very complicated, fragile thing. On the outside, it's all metal, but on the inside it's very delicate.