Playing a Fender is an art itself. They're always going out of tune.

Listening to as many guitar solos as possible is the best method for someone in the early stages. But saxophone solos can be helpful. They're interesting because they are all single notes, and therefore can be repeated on the guitar. If you can copy a sax solo you're playing very well, because the average saxophonist can play much better than the average guitarist.

Ian Gillan, Roger Glover and I wanted to be a hard rock band - we wanted to play rock and roll only.

I was impressed by Hendrix. Not so much by his playing, as his attitude - he wasn't a great player, but everything else about him was brilliant.

Sometimes if I'm not playing well on stage, I'll purposely play even worse; I'll tear it apart, because I'm so disgusted with what I'm playing that I'll go the wrong route: instead of trying to make it better, I'll go the other way and really make myself sound bad. Which is a kind of a strange outlook I suppose, really.

When you've toured for about 10 years like me, you end up feeling like you're always waiting for somebody or something. The whole day is a drag

I don't play by those rules; I'm my own worst enemy sometimes. There's something in me that has to go against the grain. You know, I don't like to be a dead fish, swimming with all the other dead fish, I like to go upstream sometimes, against the flow.