I had no aspirations to be a musician, but I picked up a guitar for two seconds and haven't put it down since.

Once you’ve lived a little you will find that whatever you send out into the world comes back to you in one way or another. It may be today, tomorrow, or years from now, but it happens; usually when you least expect it, usually in a form that’s pretty different from the original. Those coincidental moments that change your life seem random at the time but I don’t think they are. At least that’s how it’s worked out in my life. And I know I’m not the only one.

Notes and chords have become my second language and, more often than not, that vocabulary expresses what I feel when language fails me.

As soon as I could put together the, you know, three or four notes that made up, like, sort of a rock and roll lick, you know, like a Chuck Berry kind of thing, I was off and running. Just completely taken over.

When that band started out, I was 18 years old. So that was my reality all the way up until I quit the band. And even then, you know, Guns N' Roses has a nasty way of sticking around.

That's a wonderful side effect of leather pants: when you pee yourself in them, they're more forgiving than jeans.

Guitars are like women. You'll never get them totally right.