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.
The goal for me is, I build the record that I put out as one individual song. Even though it's broken up into tracks, to me it's like one hour-long piece of music. In assembling the whole thing, I'm really thinking, okay, it's gonna end here, it's gonna start here, and I kind of have the idea of the journey.
Yeah, we call that mulling around. Okay guys, come on now. What we're going to do early in this game is mull around, okay? And later, we're going call that monkey-off-our-back play.
On 'Metallica,' I recorded six or seven different guitar solos for almost every song, took the best aspects of each solo, mapped out a master solo and made a composite. Then I learned how to play the composite solo, tightened it up and replayed it for the final version.
I think it's okay that there's digital music out there, because that does mean more people have access. I mean, you're a student, and you're studying music, and you want to find a CD of a whole work, but there's one piece that intrigues you. It's easy to get that piece for a dollar for the most part. And it's so easy for people to carry around music digitally.
The script is like music to me. I approach it like it's a musical piece and I hear how it's supposed to sound when people say the words. There's rhythms and there's intonations and things, and so, when somebody comes in and hits the notes that I hear, I go okay. Or, they come close enough, and then I'll say "Well how about you try it like this?" and if they have a good ear and they can pick it up, then I think okay, they've got it.
With my solo music, I really try to step out of the box and do stuff I don't get to do with the boys. I wanted it to be fun, rock-infused and try some new things while going back to my roots. "All American" the song is one of my favorites from the album, which is why I chose to title the album after it. To me, it's the perfect song to represent the feel of the album.
'Close to the Edge' is the album where we first attempted to do the extra-long-form piece of music, having one song taking up the whole side of a piece of vinyl.
I learn stuff from making music every time I go in the studio. I'm continuing to try to find new ways to play in a song or be in a song and have a positive impact on a song.
My parents were opera singers. I didn't want to play opera because I wasn't good enough. I didn't want to play their music; I wanted to play the music that I wanted to play, and I'm so lucky that today I get to play that music, even though I don't like every song I write.
I remember one particular occasion when I hadn't played a solo for, quite literally, a couple of months. And I was asked to play a solo on a rock & roll thing. I played it and felt that what I'd done was absolute crap. I was so disgusted with myself that I made my mind up that I had to get out of it. It was messing me right up.
I like all the kinds of music I've been into. I'm certainly not a purist in that I will only play country licks in a country song or blues licks in blues stuff. The thing I would like to be able to do is to make the music sound right no matter what it is. If somebody else wants to have a label for it, then that's their business.
If you're writing a song, you have to write something that can be understood serially. When you're reading a poem that's written for the page, your eye can skip up and down. You can see the thing whole. But you're not going to see the thing whole in the song. You're going to hear it in series, and you can't skip back.
A long time ago, I made a promise to myself: "Okay, you know what? I'm going to play music, and hopefully I'll make enough money that I can go back to school. Once I make enough money to put myself through school, that's what I'm going to do."
I'm not sure if it's because I'm older and I'm thinking about family more, but I'm trying to set up this thing where I can play in one city for a month, and then write music for a couple months, then play in another city for a month, write music for a month. Just so it's not these two schizophrenic, Jekyll and Hyde kind of things; you don't have to be this monster. You get inspired and you can go write one song from that, and then you go back and play a few shows. If I could've done that in the 90s, I would have.
When I picked up guitar, it wasn't like, 'OK, I'm going to be Kenny Chesney.' It was like, 'I want to play a chord,' and then it was like, 'I want to play another one, then play a song, then sing while playing the song.'
Actually, the whole thing of being a solo artist has been such a learning process for me. Since I departed from my previous band, NIGHTWISH, it was the whole beginning of my career, there was stuff in the air. I had to learn so much.