I never really saw my dad around when the Iron Maiden and the AC/DC were playing. But he knew what I was doing. I was just absorbing music. So he just kind of left me to my own devices.
I've banged my head quite a bit. I liked Iron Maiden, Ozzy, AC/DC. And of course, Ratt and Poison.
Hard rock for me is AC/DC, Def Leppard, Tesla, Kiss. Metal tends to be louder, ruder, darker, like Judas Priest, Slayer, Iron Maiden.
I like all of the typical hard rock bands. I'm an AC/DC fanatic. I love ZZ Top, just about any Van Halen, any Judas Priest, the list goes on and on, most of the Iron Maiden stuff. Those are the big bands, but I got my feel from, I grew up on Mountain and Humble Pie. That kind of stuff is where I get my feel from.
I am not saying I never hope of ever playing with AC/DC again but, then again, is it even AC/DC any more? No Bon's beautiful voice. No Malcolm. No Brian.
I knew I really made it when my dad saw me in London and after the performance he had no notes to me and just said 'You are doing your own thing and I am proud of you.'
I'd still stand in line all day to get into an AC/DC show, because that was the one show when I was younger that kind of changed my life. Because it was a little wrong. I think I was 14 or 15, first concert without the parents, you know, and they were all worried because we were going to an AC/DC show, and it was an amphitheater.
Phil Rudd from AC/DC was someone I really liked a lot... Not because I was dazzled by his playing ability - he was just a rock, y'know?
My biggest inspiration was always early Iron Maiden, because it was the only band I knew for some time, and, as we all know, Iron Maiden is great.
I liked a lot of the things other people liked - Jimi Hendrix, The Beatles, Van Halen, AC/DC - but if I compared it to my dad's music, there just seemed to be elements missing.
A lot of stuff that I dealt with - music was my serenity, like kind of my safe place, my haven that I would just use in order to really just get away from the things that I saw every day. To kind of erase the things that I saw. So I stayed playing.
I work to loud music - hard-rock stuff like AC/DC, Guns 'n Roses, and Metallica have always been particular favorites - but for me the music is just another way of shutting the door.
To me as a fan, as a die-hard AC/DC fan, Brian Johnson is the reason I discovered AC/DC.
I was lucky to start playing guitar in the Eighties when so many great players were around to inspire me, like Yngwie Malmsteen, Van Halen and especially Dave Murray and Adrian Smith of Iron Maiden.
AC/DC is a prime example of taking that blues rock thing and just living in that world. They only really move the furniture around a little on each album, but it still works.
When I first started making music, I didn't really know what I was doing. I just wanted to write songs. I didn't have a concept. I didn't think it through. I was just flailing around doing what comes naturally. It took me a really long time to step back and deal with what I was doing with any kind of perspective or self-awareness.
When we were writing the 'Stage' album, we realized we'd never really done proper covers, where we were taking songs and making them our own and kind of playing around with them. I came up with the idea of doing a cover of 'Wish You Were Here,' but we didn't really want it on the record.