Now I need to take a piece of wood and make it sound like the railroad track, but I also had to make it beautiful and lovable so that a person playing it would think of it in terms of his mistress, a bartender, his wife, a good psychiatrist - whatever.
Les Paul
The audience, they're not professionals. They just love music. It isn't necessary to play over their heads to be admired.
I used my mother's radio as a PA system. I'd take the telephone, the speaking part, and take those two leads off and lead them into the radio and the sound would come out of the speaker.
I wanted something very dense, something that would sustain long and more pieces of wood that would be soft, sweet, for more of a mellow sound.
One minute we're over here, the next minute we're doing something completely different. But it's interesting because you are producing so many things you couldn't do with analog.
You can't go to the store and buy a good ear and rhythm.
There are times when you want to go where you used to go and you can't go there.
I have younger friends who don't work, and they aren't doing so well. My secret is to keep going, keep working.
As far as I'm concerned, I'm just a guitar player, and my job is to go out there and play and entertain and do my thing.
We go in there and we work on altering those ideas and in many cases go in different directions.
When I got my first guitar my fingers wouldn't go to the sixth string so I took off the big E and played with just five strings. I was only 6 or 7.
You learn fast from others how to be an entertainer as well as a musician; you don't necessarily have to get out there and just play - you can be an entertainer, too.
If I have to go around telling everyone how great I am, then there's something wrong with my act.
