I don't think there's any music that you hear on the radio today that would be possible without Jimi Hendrix. Rock, blues-rock, heavy metal, any guitar stuff when you get right down to it - Jimi did it. He's certainly the guy who basically invented the blues-rock genre for guitar players.

Joe Bonamassa

Greece was a muse. It inspired creativity in magical ways that I can't even begin to understand or explain.

I've always been a big fan of taking old songs and completely turning them on their head. Having no adherence to the fine tradition of the original version. Rearranging them and taking a different approach to them.

Joe Bonamassa

Ways Way Version

I don't think there's any music that you hear on the radio today that would be possible without Jimi Hendrix. Rock, blues-rock, heavy metal, any guitar stuff when you get right down to it - Jimi did it. He's certainly the guy who basically invented the blues-rock genre for guitar players.

Joe Bonamassa

Music You Would

I have a 1969 Grammer Johnny Cash acoustic guitar, and it's so inspirational.

Joe Bonamassa

Inspirational Us T

That's where the Black Keys and Jack White have succeeded and I've failed: They've actually convinced college kids that they're listening to hip music - but it's just blues twisted a new way - while I'm playing for the college kid's parents.

Joe Bonamassa

Music Yin White

That's the thing about the blues: It's one thing to hit a note on a guitar. To make it matter is something else altogether.

Joe Bonamassa

Together Thing Thin

If I feel like things are getting into a routine, I want them to be different. I need to keep improving and keep moving forward.

Joe Bonamassa

War Want Tin

If it wasn't for guys like Gary Moore, I wouldn't exist. He not only proved that the blues could rock but it could draw a crowd as well. All of which made a huge impression on me.

Joe Bonamassa

Would Which Well

I've never been known as a riff kind of artist.

Joe Bonamassa

Art Tis T

If you have a good riff with a vocal as well, then it becomes a devastating song. That's why people love riff-rock: it's the ultimate air guitar music.

Joe Bonamassa

Music Love Good

At the end of the day, you, as the player, create the tone coming out of the amp. The gear is part of it but by no means all of it.

Joe Bonamassa

Art You Tone

You know who I'd like to open for? This will be a surprise, but I'll tell you who: Iron Maiden.

Joe Bonamassa

You Will Who

To sell out London's Hammersmith Apollo is amazing. Selling it out for two nights? Even better.

Joe Bonamassa

Amazing Two T

Basically, 2011 was the hardest year on the road for me because I did a spring tour and a fall tour plus nine weeks in the summer, and I was pretty worse for wear by the time I got home in December. I know I was only 34, but that was a tough lap.

Joe Bonamassa

Time Home Year

The one area where I'll say that Hendrix is underrated was his ability to use chord melodies. He used different inversions of chords and was able to make a three-piece band sound absolutely huge. From the moment Hendrix and the Experience came on the scene, power trios had their work cut out for them.

Joe Bonamassa

Work Power Mom

Doing the acoustic at Carnegie is basically advised because electric music tends to get, let's just say, acoustically unsound.

Joe Bonamassa

Music Car Use

A guitar is so tactile, and when you're playing bends - and bending notes is a big part of my style - there are so many notes within the note you're bending from and the note you're bending up to.

Joe Bonamassa

Art You Yin

I was thrust into an adult world very quickly, and that can make anyone somewhat socially maladjusted to dealing with people your own age. But I wouldn't trade any of it.

Joe Bonamassa

Age Your You

I used to watch MTV when they played music, and discovered Robert Cray, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Jeff Healey.

Joe Bonamassa

Music Watch Used

When you're 12 and, you know, slightly overweight and - for lack of a better word - white, and you're playing blues, you get a lot of press.

Joe Bonamassa

You Yin Word

There's great cars, and then there's Aston Martins. Same thing for the 1959 Les Paul - it's an authentic piece of art that can never truly be replicated, and its mysteries are special.

Joe Bonamassa

If you keep working hard and not take 'no' for an answer, you achieve.

Joe Bonamassa

I live, breathe, and sleep guitars.

Joe Bonamassa

All I'm trying to do is simply play guitar and elicit this creativity from the instrument.

Joe Bonamassa

Everything Paul Kossoff did came from his fingers and went right into the amp. He was his own effects unit.

Joe Bonamassa

I think great music sells records, and I also think, do you want to be a reality star, or someone that actually has credibility? Because you can't have both.

Joe Bonamassa

I'm an acoustic guitar owner - in the sense that I own them, and they sit at my house, and I never play them.

Joe Bonamassa

I went through a period in my life where I didn't have money to buy ramen noodles and peanut butter and jelly, but I also needed to go to the guitar store and buy strings and picks and polish and rags. I couldn't live with myself if I didn't play guitar.

Joe Bonamassa

The thing people forget about Kevin Shirley a lot of the time is that he's not only a great producer, he's also a world-class engineer. He really knows how to get a sound.

Joe Bonamassa

Sometimes you have to blame yourself before you can blame others.

Joe Bonamassa

There's always talk about the blues dying out, but it won't.

Joe Bonamassa

I'm not sure when I first heard about Beth Hart. I do remember seeing her on various TV shows. I think I'd seen her on 'Conan O'Brien' or whatever. And it seemed that whenever we'd tour Europe, our paths would cross.

Joe Bonamassa

You often see lifestyle over substance in L.A. Some rock stars dress up like they're going to play a gig when they're just going to the 7-Eleven store on a Tuesday night.

Joe Bonamassa

I never had this ego where I must write everything. I'm not Bob Dylan.

Joe Bonamassa

The blues, the way it's interpreted, is always a product of your environment, and so it's almost like food. You know, it's like you use the ingredients, and you use your life experiences that you have.

Joe Bonamassa

I don't have any legato skills; I could never figure out how to roll the notes off.

Joe Bonamassa

As far as actual playing, Clapton - by far - is my biggest influence, and you can tuck Jeff Beck underneath that.

Joe Bonamassa

The first thing you realise very quickly when you decide to do an acoustic version of an electric song is your solo either becomes either very truncated, very different, or non-existent, because even if you play a clean solo, it's different with the Kryptonite... with the acoustic.

Joe Bonamassa

If we got into a time machine and went back to the 1700s, classical and baroque music would have been the equivalent of Beyonce and Jay-Z.

Joe Bonamassa

I don't really do scales... I mean, I play parts of them, but then I bail and start playing parts of other things. The term 'scale' feels very scripted to me because I'm an improv player.

Joe Bonamassa

It's good to see young kids getting into the blues.

Joe Bonamassa

When I write for an album, I'll always have about 30 different types of instrument around me. I set them up in a small room with my computer running GarageBand, which is always set to record.

Joe Bonamassa

If I'm soloing, I usually try to start with a theme, which will often stem from the blues.

Joe Bonamassa

At the end of the day, you really want to make sure that organic music, made by human beings, at least has a voice.

Joe Bonamassa

I've been lucky and very fortunate over the course of my career, and I try to do something good for people every day.

Joe Bonamassa

Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck made me an Anglophile. I listened to English and Irish artists as a kid, and they were way louder, heavier, and faster than the traditional blues that I was listening to.

Joe Bonamassa

The fact that I tour religiously in the spring, religiously in the fall, and do 125 shows - you can set your watch to that. And you could have set your watch to that in 2000 or 1999, and you can set your watch to it in 2012.

Joe Bonamassa

Jimi Hendrix is a classic example of a player in which everything he did, it was all in his hands.

Joe Bonamassa

I'm a kooky collector and own a couple of hundred guitars.

Joe Bonamassa

Who's to say a blues man can't play rock and roll?

Joe Bonamassa