I cherish my privacy, and woe betide anyone who tries to interfere with that.
Jeff Beck
I don't care about the rules. In fact, if I don't break the rules at least 10 times in every song then I'm not doing my job properly.
Listen to the great guitarists of the Fifties. They didn't do that nasty sort of industrial distortion. They played musical compositions as solos - Scotty Moore, Cliff Gallup, Django Reinhardt. There wasn't a bad note in any of those solos. I listened to that and stayed with those rules.
Mahavishnu's drummer Billy Cobham was the best I'd ever heard. Not loud, that's not the secret - powerful as hell when he wanted to be - but 90 per cent of the time, he was just dancing with the drums, you know? Just like a butterfly, all over them.
The Les Paul was more challenging because of the weight of it, but the tone was there that the Fender will never have and vice versa. So you have to make a decision as to what you're going to have as your main instrument. After seeing Hendrix, I thought, 'I'll stick with the 'Strat.'
I don't understand why some people will only accept a guitar if it has an instantly recognizable guitar sound. Finding ways to use the same guitar people have been using for 50 years to make sounds that no one has heard before is truly what gets me off.
If you were to plot my success or failure, it goes, it very seldom stays on a high plateau.
The only way you can get Scotty Moore's tone is with a big hollowbody guitar.
I couldn't not play a Les Paul guitar. Les always used to point to my Strat and say, 'Why do you have that piece of crap around your neck?' I'd say, 'Yours are too heavy. I had to drill holes in it.'
I play the way I do because it allows me to come up with the sickest sounds possible. That's the point now isn't it?
Sometimes when I do an overdub solo, they'll keep four or five of my attempts and then mix the bits that they like to make a solo up out of them. It's not against the rules, really - I can learn my own solos, then. But that's the whole beauty of multi-track recording, isn't it?
I was going to write an autobiography once. I started writing it, and then I thought, 'No, let them dig around when I'm dead.'
It's a diabolical business. I can't imagine how hellish it must be to be hounded like Amy Winehouse and people like that. I have a little peripheral place on the outskirts of celebrity, when I go to premieres and that sort of stuff, which is as close as I want to get.
It wasn't the muso thing that got me recognition in the beginning. It was doing 'Wild Thing.'
I play purely from the heart, y'know, and so if it doesn't work the first couple of hours, forget it.
If I'm on form and I'm not being bothered too much by mental problems or whatever, I can whip out something good. That's why I've done quite a few overdubs for Tina Turner and things like that, because even before she made this comeback I said yes to her, just because I love Tina Turner.
Cliff Gallup is one of my heroes; I'd dearly love to meet him.
I've become very conscious of how easy it is for people to lie.
You stop anybody on any street, around the world, and they know who Eric Clapton is. They don't know who I am!
It's easy to hurl abuse at those awards ceremonies like the Oscars and all that, which we tend to do. We tend to vent our anger at things which we feel are unjust or undeserving. But when you're the recipient, it makes it a lot different.
Nothing is more annoying than a great singer getting drowned out by a loud guitar.
I like an element of chaos in music. That feeling is the best thing ever, as long as you don't have too much of it.
I try to become a singer. The guitar has always been abused with distortion units and funny sorts of effects, but when you don't do that and just let the genuine sound come through, there's a whole magic there.
I'm not committed to putting myself up for a blues guitarist, even though I love playing the blues.
I was really small when jazz broke through in England and I can still remember sneaking off to the living room to listen to it on the radio - much to my parent's disapproval.
I'm a very emotional person. If I've got something on my mind, that would stop me from giving my best.
I loved Motown. I loved the musicality and the sound.
When they said there was gonna be about 100,000 people at Woodstock, and it went up to 200,000, I just blanked off and thought, 'I don't want to do this.' If they're filming it, it's too nerve-racking.
If the song makes it and people like it, then I guess that's all that matters, really.
When you get guys coming up to you in clubs or restaurants or somewhere, and they say how much they've enjoyed your playing on records, then that pays off dividends every day; every time they say it, you think, 'I'm glad I did that.'
I like the wildness of Buddy Guy.
The fun that I've had needs to be seen on the screen. I like the thought of a bunch of people laughing at what I laughed at - because my life is surreal, completely wacko.
A lunatic lifestyle on the road doesn't permit you to get too hip to stuff as you should.
I have to have people around who are of a certain strain of humour. I can't deal with people who have no humour.
The right time to record is when you're not quite ahead of yourself.
I thought there couldn't be a better backdrop for some kind of powerful music than a big orchestra. My wish to hear how a guitar would sound in front of an orchestra has always been there.
I do a very poor man's pedal steel on the Stratocaster.
I don't organize myself sufficiently to get an album of material together, book the studio, and go. I need to be kicked; I need to be forced physically to go in. That's how it works for me. I'll get a great idea in the house, and it'll stay there unless somebody comes and drags it out of me!
