Rock guitarists usually do not wish to think trains of thought about anything but their own guitar playing during a long solo, and I could not play this way if I were not able to divide my attention between my ever changing musical environment and my instrument itself.
And this whole period of time of gradually working at being a better guitar player and songwriter have gradually led me to the point where I feel I'm doing a clearer representation of the thing that I've been feeling inside me since I was four years old.
For me, theory has always opened things up to where I can walk into a room and just by hearing something I know exactly where to go on the guitar. I have a better time playing because I have a variety of colors to bring to the table.
Pot put me in a position where I could walk far away from my playing and hear it in the second person. It helped me step away from myself. I stopped seeing the guitar as a thing I'm holding in my hands and started seeing it as a thing that's at one with outer space and nothingness.
Anybody who's a guitar player that's spent that time with another guitar player, there's nothing better than that.
Any guitar solo should reflect the music that it's soloing over and not just be existing in its own sort of little world.
I write lyrics. I play the guitar. If the rest of the band had to do my schedule, they would be dead
When the intellectual part of guitar playing overrides the spiritual, you don't get to extreme heights.