You know, most people, they want to go to Hollywood. They want to be a star. They want to be a rock star. That thought never entered any of our minds, the Van Halen family.
I think Clapton is brilliant. He’s the only one who moved me. The only one who made me want to play the guitar.
Everything comes to me while I’m sitting on the pot.
Bass is for people who can’t play guitar.
I grew up on a lot of early Beatles, DC5, Cream, Clapton, Page, Beck and Hendrix.
The stainless-steel frets were a major breakthrough, because of the amount of playing and bending that I do. I have to get my guitars refretted every couple of months.
I’m not a drunk anymore, but since they cut out my tongue, I sound drunk.
I just consider myself slightly left-of-center. I’m not your average bear. I – what’s the word? I’m not – normal.
Before the operation on my left hand I wasn’t able to stretch my fingers open all the way. I’ve never had very big hands, but I could do the splits with them. Eventually I couldn’t any more. I had a twisted tendon in my little finger that prevented me from being able to stretch.
Actually, if I could deliberately sit down and write a pop hit, all my songs would be pop hits! Let’s put it this way. I play what I like to hear. And sometimes I like to hear something poppy, and sometimes I don’t.
When I was growing up and listening to bands like the Dave Clark Five, the groove was what initially got me going. I really like that funky, heavy groove.
The only band I was really over-into was Cream. And the only thing I really liked about them was their live stuff ’cause they played two verses, then go off and jam for 20 minutes, come back and do a chorus and end. And I love the live jam stuff, the improvisation.
The one thing I do have is good ears. I don’t mean perfect pitch, but ears for picking things up. I developed my ear through piano theory, but I never had a guitar lesson in my life, except from Eric Clapton off of records.
I started doing all kinds of weird stuff on the guitar, which became part of my playing. I started doing harmonics and tapping on the guitar and pulling off strings and doing all this weird stuff that no one had ever done before.
I mean it’s funny, playing music, how of course you want it to do well, you want them to like it, but it’s not competitive like an election, it’s the Olympics, it’s not a Formula 1 race. The Billboard charts are just to show you what people like.
Best believe that needle hurt you Best to see these true colors Than follow one of your false virtues A little secret to make you think: Why is the crazy stuff we never say, poetry in ink?
I’m the one in the band that said I’m not going on tour unless we do a record.
I’m writing, and just doing the same thing I always do.
I can’t read music. Instead, I’d do stuff inside the piano, do harmonics and all kinds of crazy things. They used to put me in these annual piano contests down at Long Beach City College, and two years in a row, I won first prize – out of like 5,000 kids!
Cancer is like a cockroach. It just comes back stronger. I’m tearing apart the immune system of the cockroach and seeing how it ticks. I’ve opened up my own pathology center.
It makes me feel kind of weird, but obviously the Man Upstairs gave me something and it touches people, and I’m just so blessed.