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I'm a guitar player. Actually, I think of myself as a songwriter/rhythm-guitar player.
Sep 17, 2025
I don't know of a guitar player that has only one guitar. They're never happy with one. I'm never happy with just one of them. I woke up and ended up with six, even if you can only play one at a time!
My mum says I wanted to be a surgeon, but I don't remember that. I think from the time I knew what was happening, I wanted to be a guitar player.
As a musician and a guitar player, I can noodle as well as anybody. But from my background as a session musician, I always try to play what is called for by the lyric and listening to the song. As a writer, that's what I do, too.
To be honest, I'm one of the least-technical guitar players around. I just want a guitar to feel good and sound good. That's it, period.
I'm the first one to admit, I'm a pretty unorthodox guitar player.
Oddly enough, Hendrix is not my favorite guitar player. There are very few guitar players I get feeling from.
I'd probably get a much quicker and better result if I went to a really great guitar player for a certain style of guitar that I have a problem doing. But there is a challenge in figuring out if I can do that myself.
I write songs on guitar and that's about how good of a guitar player I am. I can write songs on it.
I did a song, "Court and Spark," for a Joni Mitchell tribute album that's yet to see the light of day. So she's someone I'd like to do something with, sure. I worked with the great guitar player Bill Frisell on Phantom Moon - that was fun. I'm such a fan; he's amazing.
I will miss a good friend who was so talanted. He was such agreat performer/ guitar player. Sleep well Prince.
I had given up the guitar between '75 and '78. I completely lost interest. I was sick of hearing other guitar players and I was tired of my tunes.
I guess that somehow I've survived as a professional guitar player. I've made it 16 years now and I feel like I'm just getting started. Variety is a secret to the success of that.
I'm not a good guitar player.
I forget what the official name of it was, but they did an all-day of roots music - every kind of music you can imagine from around the country - New Orleans Jazz to Indian flute players, R&B, you name it. I met and became good friends with (blues guitar player) Joe Louis Walker. He was on the show.
Being a professional wrestler was never one of my goals in life. I always wanted to be some kind of entertainer. I used to want to be a rock singer or a guitar player but I can't sing and I can't play the guitar.
But I've come to the point in my evolution on the instrument where I realize that I can't play the same stuff that just a guitar player or organ player would play - and I need to embrace that in a big way.
Basically, I'm just a guitar player that figured out I wasn't ever gonna be able to buy dinner with my guitar playing so I got into songwriting, which is a little more profitable business.
I dedicated all the time I had to it. The 10 hour workout was just what I put in the magazine at the time, but for me it was every waking moment.
Still to this day, I am deeply satisfied when watching a guitar player who is connected with their art and instrument. GuitarTV helps you tap into that connection, and to each other.
I listen to other guitar players, yeah. It gives me new concepts and shows me where the instrument is going for the future and it is going some places. There are some musicians who are really putting out a good vibe with new theories. I try and keep up.
I came from the last couple of years in a generation where we didn't have a computer around so we didn't waste as much time on the internet as we do now so I had large chuncks of time which to devote to doing something.
I didn't want to fall into the trap of competing with all these other great guitar players. I just want to sidestep the whole thing and get out of the race.
I didn't go to guitar school and I don't know how to play chords, but I can do it in my own way and I think sometimes that will piss off some guitar players who sit around playing their stuff all day long and then there are people who like that.
I don't remember that I copied any guitar player note-for-note. But I remember copying Charlie Parker note for note.
I’ve worked with such legendary guitar players as Allan Holdsworth, Ronnie Montrose, Eric Clapton, Lowell George and Steve Vai, but none of them come close to having Ed’s [Eddie Van Halen's] fantastic combination of chops and musicianship. I rank him along with Charlie Parker and Art Tatum as one of the three greatest musicians of my lifetime. Unfortunately, I don’t think Ed puts himself in that class.
The time I burned my guitar it was like a sacrifice. You sacrifice the things you love. I love my guitar.
I think it's a really excellent time to be a woman in music. A lot of the past was women fighting to be where women are now. Every once in a while I'll get the, "Oh, you're a pretty good guitar player for a girl," bullshit like that. But that's all changing.
It is a well-known mystery that guitar players suddenly get better once they are dead. Buddy Holly was the first. Stevie Ray Vaughan is known by a lot more people than had ever heard of him when he was alive.
I was sixteen, I became a working guitar player gigging in LA, mostly in top 40 bands, then touring. I learned to take songs apart, down to their bones. Songwriters would hire me to produce their demos, which lead me to become a songwriter. The relationship and power music has to TV and film attracted me to composing [and] I learned to write for instruments other than guitar.
What interested me about Chuck Berry was the way he could step out of the rhythm part with such ease, throwing in a nice, simple riff, and then drop straight into the feel of it again. We used to play a lot more rhythm stuff. We'd do away with the differences between lead and rhythm guitar. You can't go into a shop and ask for a "lead guitar". You're a guitar player, and you play a guitar.
A lot of guitar players get stuck on a person ... before they find out who they really are ... every guitar player should remember be yourself - just let it rip.
I could care less about sitting around and practicing the guitar for hours a day and trying to be the best guitar player on the planet.
Besides being a guitar player, I'm a big fan of the guitar. I love that damn instrument.
Blues music is becoming more and more popular than it ever was. I'm always meeting people on the road that are really young, and are guitar players.... male and female.
My mother was a very beautiful lady, I thought. She was very good to me. I guess - she died when I was nine and a half, but if she had lived I probably wouldn't be trying to play guitar. She wanted me to be known, but as something else. Not a guitar player.
I'm definitely a frustrated musician, though it's more in terms of wishing I was a better guitar player and songwriter. But I've never regretted becoming an actor instead. I think it's been a more pure form of self-expression for me. I luckily found something that I could aspire to be good at, whereas I never... I think I'd never quite reach that level of artist that I enjoy in the music world.
But remember, guitar players are a dime a dozen.
I feel my spot is somewhere between a bass player and a rhythm guitar player. I play with a pick. I play very aggressively. I always have a distortion pedal in line, and I play less melodies and do more stuff against the guitars that create melodies.
Too bad that Paul Ryan confessed to being a fan of Rage Against The Machine. By doing so, he not only begged for a bucketing by many of their fans but actually got one from the band's guitar player, Tom Morello.
I quit my band in New York City in 1969 and I got really angry at them. I got angry at one of my guitar players and I dove over the drum set and we got into a fight.
I think I come under the singer/songwriter badge. I've always written songs right from the very beginning. Because of my style of playing people tend of me more of a guitar player than a singer sometimes.
I always hated jazz guitar. I loved jazz saxophone but I hated jazz guitar. If I would buy an organ trio record I would make sure I'd buy one that did not have a guitar player on it. The sound was awful!
When I was a kid in Eugene, Oregon, there was this fantastic guitar player who went out on the tables, chairs, out in the audience and played. So I started taking my guitar in the audience. I tripped, fell backwards and ripped my pants.
I only took about five guitar lessons in my life from an actual teacher. I learned fast that that wasn't for me. I didn't have the attention span to learn that way. So I learned the basics from my dad, then just from playing on stage, and watching other guitar players.
There are many excellent guitar players but I have to say Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton are still at the top! There are many imitators but very few genuine articles. There is so much more to playing than a fast blur of notes, like feeling and emotion from the soul. It's like punctuating a sentence and knowing when to lay back and not fill up all the space. Those are the things I tried to teach my son Tim when he began playing.
Jimi Hendrix is the greatest guitar player in the world... a guy who mastered that instrument. It was talking when he played. And when he did a solo, he made the guitar cry - or made it sound like it was coming from the devil's amplifier.
My older brother was the guitar player in the neighborhood band. My parents were the cool ones that had the basement for rehearsal. Rather than hang with my peers after school, I wanted to just listen to the band. More than that, I wanted to play.
It's not like you're being fake, it's just the way you color it, like a guitar player uses pedals or different effects. That's why I get so mad about people who are down on vocal reverb. It's not a crutch, people, it's an aesthetic choice!
I was a guitar player on the streets of Asbury Park and already a member in good standing amongst those who lie in service of the truth - artists with a small A. But I held four clean aces. I had youth, almost a decade of hardcore bar band experience, a good group of homegrown musicians who were attuned to my performance style, and a story to tell.