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Every musician wants to do something which will hold up for a long time, and I guess we did it with 'Stairway to Heaven.'
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You can't expect to be the same person you were three years ago. Some people expect you to be and can't come to terms with the fact that if a year has elapsed between LPs, that means one year's worth of changes. The material consequently is affected by that, the lyrics are affected by that... the music too.
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I'm obsessed - not just interested, obsessed - with folk music, street music, the parallels between a country's street music and its so-called classical and intellectual music, the way certain scales have travelled right across the globe. All this ethnological and musical interaction fascinates me. Have you heard any trance music? That's the thing.
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I can only listen to what I'm working on, at the time. I can't listen to anything else because I don't want to copy it.
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I'm trying to photosynthesize like a plant. I'm off eating. Although I am making a lot of banana daiquiries in my room in the blender I've got, with lots of powdered vitamins in them. This tour I'm going to get some Afghani hangings and put them in my room, so that my hotel rooms look like mosques.
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I like change and I like contrast.
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That's the music that I play at home all the time, Joni Mitchell. Court and Spark I love because I'd always hoped that she'd work with a band. But the main thing with Joni is that she's able to look at something that's happened to her, draw back and crystallize the whole situation, then write about it. She brings tears to my eyes, what more can I say? It's bloody eerie. I can relate so much to what she says. "Now old friends are acting strange/They shake their heads/They say I've changed."
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This week, I'm a gypsy. Maybe next week it'll be glitter rock.
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The element of change has been the thing, really. We put out the first one, then the second... then a third LP totally different from them. It's the reason we were able to keep it together.
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My favorite guitar solo of all time was Elliot Randall's on `Reelin' In The Years'.
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I bet you can't play slide piano.
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There's a very old recording maxim that goes, 'Distance makes depth.' I've used that a hell of a lot-whether it's tracking guitars or the whole band. People are used to close-miking amps, but I'd have a mic out around the back, as well, and then balance the two. Also, you shouldn't have to use EQ in the studio if the instruments sound right. You should be able to get the right tones simply with the science of microphone placement.
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All my houses are isolated. Many is the time I just stay home alone.
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There's always music that moves me. It doesn't necessarily mean that it's within the parenthesis of rock or blues, or whatever. It's usually far more reaching than that. It can be in many different genres.
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There's so much that can be done on the guitar. And that's what is so good about the guitar - everyone can really enjoy themselves on it and have a good time, which is what it's all about.
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My vocation is more in composition really than anything else - building up harmonies using the guitar, orchestrating the guitar like an army, a guitar army.
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You never knew what was going to happen in concert. It was a really exciting prospect to go onstage, and you can hear that in the live recordings ... wherever we were and whatever year it was, we always went onstage determined to do our best.
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I always thought the good thing about the guitar was that they didn't teach it in school.
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I'm still terrified of flying. I really have to get drunk to fly. I've found that I've developed fears I never had before... fears of heights, claustrophobia... only in cities, though, never in the country.
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I can communicate far better on a guitar than I can through my mouth.
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Once I get onstage the tension explodes and I'm fine. I'm in another world - in a trance almost, doing what I love best, expressing myself through guitar.
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I do not worship the devil. But magic does intrigue me. Magic of all kinds. I bought Crowley's house to go up and write in. The thing is, I just never get up that way. Friends live there now.
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Actually, I'm getting one made up with eight necks and I'm going to get a wheelwright to make a big rim around it and then I can do cartwheels off the stage.
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So far I've been very, very fortunate because it appears that people like to hear the music I like to play. What more fortunate position can a musician be in?