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

Session work makes you more strict. You can't hit notes all over the place. You've got to make each one really count.

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.

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

Everything I do is usually totally spontaneous.

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.