My first killer amp was a Sunn Beta Lead. It was solid-state, but that Sunn was incredibly loud. I used to say to my friends, 'Hey, check it out. It's only on two.'
Even though I'll do finger warm-ups that go up and down the neck to build up my chops and dexterity, I never, ever sit around and practice the actual licks I'm gonna play live. If you do, then you'll be all worried about the complexity of getting the fingering right and everything else about it, as opposed to the feel.
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.
Find someone you can jam with. That's a big deal. When you play with someone else, you gotta work together to get the thing started and in time, working and in the groove.
I was lucky enough to get to see guys like Bugs Henderson, Jimmy Wallace, all those great Texas blues players.
To me and my band, guitar riffs are what it's all about. We know that every time we jam on a great riff, we've got a fighting chance of writing a great song!
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.
I'm into sounds, man.
When I play live, I jump around like an idiot for an hour-and-a-half or more under a lighting rig that's hotter than hell.
Whenever I feel my chops are slacking, I'll play some wide-stretch trilling exercises and take them up and down the neck as well as across it.
I'm into the whole song-as-a-piece-of-music thing: if it literally doesn't call for it, if it already has enough stuff going on, then it's okay not to play a solo.
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.
When I tried to play something and screwed up, I'd hear some other note that would come into play. Then I started trying different things to find the beauty in it.
I was mostly influenced by bands like Black Sabbath and Judas Priest - Metallica's 'Kill 'Em All' was also a hell of an inspiration.
On our early demos, I was really frustrated with my recorded sound. I'd tell my dad, 'Dude, I want more 'cut' on my guitar - I want more treble.' And he'd say, 'Now, son, you don't want that. It'll hurt your ears.' But my dad just didn't understand.
We still get those kind of cats coming out to our shows. Once you're into it, you're into it for a lifetime.
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.
Towards the end with Pantera - although I was never unhappy with the music we were making - it became one-dimensional, and we wanted to open things back up.
I used to skip school and paint my face with Ace Frehley Kiss make-up.
The worst advice I ever received from my dad was to play by the book.
