Spittin' blood, smokin' guitars, fire everywhere - Kiss is where I started.

People that love this form of music have loved it from way back - Sabbath, Zeppelin, the early days.

Using string bends instead of just playing regular, unbent notes can definitely help give certain riffs a cooler, heavier edge.

I was mostly influenced by bands like Black Sabbath and Judas Priest - Metallica's 'Kill 'Em All' was also a hell of an inspiration.

Lessons didn't really work out for me, so I went to the old school, listening to records and learning what I wanted to learn.

My whammy system is set up so I can yank the bar up as well as do dive-bombs with it. This means that if I accidentally push down on the bridge with my palm, my strings go sharp and sound out of tune. I make sure this never happens by never resting my hand on the bridge when muting. I always do my muting just in front of the bridge.

Every song is different.

Man, don't get me started on Pat Travers. That dude writes killer blues rock and roll riffs.

Musicians tend to get bored playing the same thing over and over, so I think it's natural to experiment.

I'm not gonna say it's all done, 'cause it ain't ever all done.

We still get those kind of cats coming out to our shows. Once you're into it, you're into it for a lifetime.

Losing control of your pick on stage sucks, so I scratch some deep X's into both sides of my pick with something sharp, like a dart.

Glen Tipton and K.K. Downing are the gods of double-guitar axemanship.

All syncopation means is accenting beats that you don't normally accent.

The harder stuff has always done it for me. Man, if it rips, I'll give it a thumbs up!

If you wanna get out of a rut bad enough, it'll always happen. It's up to you, though. No one else is ever gonna do it for you.

My heroes were Eddie Van Halen - especially after Van Halen I, II, III, and IV - Randy Rhoads, Ace Frehley and dudes like that. My brother played drums and we jammed in the garage and started writing our own stuff.

With the right outlook, you can learn to entertain yourself and entertain each other so you can enjoy doing what you're doing. There's obviously gonna be highs and lows, and the trick to it is to be able to maintain composure and stay high even when you're in the lows. That way, when you hit the highs ,it'll be twice as killer.

I love jamming with my band because the guys inspire me every time. We all get off on each other's playing.

Of all the grunge bands to come out of Seattle, Alice in Chains were the greatest.

Make your heart bleed! Put your soul into that damn thing. And try new things.

The worst advice I ever received from my dad was to play by the book.

I'm a spazzer, you know?

Jamming with other people will create energy and excitement that you can feed off, and which will help push you to do things you'd never dream of doing by yourself.