There is still a very strong subculture of people who want to do great things on an instrument, and who are stimulated by hearing people who can. That's reassuring. But it's gonna take a person - and I don't know who this is - to come along and reinvent the guitar as a virtuosic instrument in a completely different realm than any of us have done, or anybody else in the past. That's the clincher. Maybe that will happen and maybe it won't.

I'm a big fan of cultural music, and that's how I try to expand my playing, by listening to music that is not conventionally American.

Jeff Beck is compelled by his inner artistic drive to keep evolving the instrument. He'll use the whammy bar with the volume knob and the tone control all at the same time - creating harmonics that no human being should be able to hit.

Criticism can be devastating. When push comes to shove, we are all very sensitive.

It is only the most elite of elite musicians whose unconventional approach becomes convention.

I have an independent record label called Favored Nations on which I released an album by an artist called Johnny A, who plays an arch top Gibson through a Marshall, but the tone is all in his fingers.

If you want to play something that you can't, you need to see and hear yourself doing it in your minds eye. It will start to happen