If you start having to tell people you're cool, you're not.

I don't know any American rock bands.

When I write songs, it's just me and a cassette player - or at least it used to be before smartphones - to quickly record a basic idea.

I could have moved anywhere I wanted to. But for family reasons, I stayed in the Midwest.

We've got the pretty-boy lead singer and the fat, dumpy drummer, and I'm the zany guitarist. Sure, we've played up the image at times. But it's the music that matters most.

I never tried to emulate The Beatles, and I never really wanted to be like The Rolling Stones. I never really felt that I had the look or the demeanor of veteran musicians.

There's no rush to ever put out a new Cheap Trick record. We put it out when we feel like it.

I'm a normal person. I don't see where people come off saying I'm crazy.

We're basically a rock band - guitar, bass, drums and vocals. But we take it further than that. We can be rotten, dirty, and heavy as anyone, but at the same time, we've got a lot of melody.

Look at Bob Dylan: his voice is not a great sound, but it gets the idea across... and that is what's really important.

I actually did try to emigrate to Australia a long time ago.

We played with Rush somewhere way early in our career.

We all record together. We do it live; then, after that, we do overdubs, if we need to, to repair stuff. Usually when we do stuff, we have to make sure we get the bass and drums down, and by doing it live, you're actually playing the song. You're not piecing together a song.

You've got to work hard and have luck. Luck only enters in if you do work hard.

We toured with Deep Purple a number of times.

We played New Year's Eve in Los Angeles, maybe 1978, opening for Kansas or somebody. Driving to the hotel after the gig, we came on KLOS. It was like, 'All right! We're in L.A., we just played a big gig, and we're on the radio!' That was the start of something big.

The song 'Hello There' was written because we never got a soundcheck. 'Hello There' was our soundcheck.

I never went to any high school dances or proms unless I was playing in them.

Duane Eddy is somebody I wanted to play like. I discovered him before The Beatles, and he totally got to me. He sent me a note back in 1977 and said that he really liked what Cheap Trick were doing. That's one of those 'Wow!' moments, you know?

I got to meet Keith Moon!

Every other year, I spend Thanksgiving in England with Dave Clark from the Dave Clark Five and a bunch of other people.

I was three years old, and I walked onstage during a performance that my father was a tenor in 'The Barber of Seville.' I walked out onstage, and people started laughing and clapping, and that was it. That was all it took. Laughing and clapping, I still enjoy today.

If we waited for a hit record to tour, we would never have toured.

Basically, I try to let the song dictate what guitar I use. If it's a really loud, crazy song, I'll pull out the cheapest, oldest guitar I own, one that feeds back easily. But most of the time, I just use whatever's around.

I like the guys in Cheap Trick. I like playing in it and the music we do.

When we toured with AC/DC, we always had to bring our A game. They really felt like our equals.

Playing it safe isn't fun; you have to take a chance.

Some bands, they're too snooty, or they think they're too this or that and wouldn't talk to us. And some other bands are afraid to talk to us.

We do try to be entertainers, but we're musicians first, and we try to showcase the music.

I've seen bands come out and begin their concerts with these long, slow, boring songs. Are they kidding, or what?

I got to work with John Lennon. That was pretty cool.

I like Harvey Mandel.

I always hated watching bands: the guy would break a string or be out of tune, and I have perfect pitch, so it would always tick me off when a guy is up there, and he'd break a string.

When a guitarist can evoke a certain mood through his playing, that's what's most important to me.

If you can say something special on the guitar, then you're going to perk my ears up. But if you're just gonna run through all the scales, then I can always find something else to listen to.

People used to trade their guitars to get new ones; I never traded anything.

I like 'Salty Dog' by Procol Harum.

Cheap Trick have always prided ourselves on being groundbreaking.

In 1977, I had Paul Rivera hotrod six Fender Deluxes for me. At that time, a lot of studio guys in L.A. were using those - not so much live guys but studio guys. They had terrific tone and great technique, and I was like, 'Well, I like having terrific tone even though I don't have any technique.'

Some people design buildings and aircraft carriers and cars - and I designed picks.

Hendrix was a different kind of guitar player. It was like, 'Holy cow, this guy can sing, he can play all this weird stuff... what is this?' It was a new kind of music.

I took one guitar lesson, and they wanted me to play 'Mary Had a Little Lamb' or 'Michael Row the Boat Ashore,' and that was the last guitar lesson that I ever took, so I taught myself what I wanted to know.

I was the Richard Gere non-lookalike in Illinois.

I never wanted to be Keith Richards or Jimmy Page.

I love guitars, and guitars love me, but sometimes they need new homes where they can live to rock another day.

I'm kind of a goony guy, a dweeb or a geek.

The way I look at it, I'm a songwriter that just happens to play guitar.

If you don't have a great chorus, write a good bridge first. I often do that and find I write good bridges.

Living someplace like L.A. seemed awful to me.

I just wanted to write about stuff that was happening in real life, and that's not just love songs about your girlfriend.