When you're around someone good, your own standards are raised.

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.

A lot of blues guitarists play with only three fingers, and they can't figure out certain runs that require the use of their little fingers. Classical training is good for that.

When you're recording, if you're not really clean in your playing, it sounds like a mess.

I don't put myself on Jeff Beck's level, but I can relate to him when he says he'd rather be working on his car collection than playing the guitar.

Stevie Ray Vaughan was very intense. Maybe that's what caught everybody's attention. As a player, he didn't do anything amazing.

I'm very moved by Renaissance music, but I still love to play hard rock - though only if it's sophisticated and has some thought behind it.