Meanwhile after failing the bar twice, I knew some people in New York and moved here in August '71.

I started off with the really funky stuff like Ramsey Lewis, Milt Jackson, Kenny Burrell.

I was 12 in '55 when rock and roll hit. It just completely transformed me.

I think Blank Generation holds up pretty well. You listen to that with headphones and there's a lot going on there with the guitars- it's the product of a lot of fighting.

Reading music is something that's inherently hateful to me. It makes music like mathematics.

By then I was in Brooklyn and drank my way through that summer. I stopped when I got sick of that and got a job at the Strand bookstore, which was a little better than the tax job.

My playing started to develop through the Miles Davis stuff I was listening to.