We had a band called the Grainers. In our 12-year-old minds, this was like a double entendre for like being annoying and being a delicious donut. I got kicked out of the band for playing bass incorrectly. Like, I was playing it like a guitar. I was just so like twee and British, even as like the little 12-year-old boy.
I was raised in bars. My grandmother had one, and when I was 12 years old I'd go stay with her and that's where I got to watch her band play -- she had a seven or eight-piece band, and I would sit in the kitchen and peek through the door. I was kind of a 12-year-old bottle washer.
My grammar school graduating class in 1941 had a little party for 13 or 14 year-old kids. [Trumpeter] King Kolax's band played for the party and Gene Ammons was playing tenor saxophone with the band. And that's when I said, "That's it!" Just like that, tunnelvision ever since.
There have been times where I have been playing a 16-year-old, and people have been like, 'She still looks 12.' I'm like, 'I'm 22. What do you mean I don't look 16?' So I'm comfortable just rocking my young body.
I started playing guitar at the age of 8 or 9 years. Very early, and I was like already into pop music and was just trying to copy what I heard on the radio. And at a very early age I started experimenting with old tape recorders from my parents. I was 11 or 12 at that time and then when I was like 14 or 15 I had a punk band. I made all the classic rock musician's evolutions and then in the early nineties I bought my first sampler and that is how I got into electronic music, because I was able to produce it on my own. That was quite a relief.
I like being out front, doing what I do, but then I also like playing in a band too. I'd like to do stuff like I did with Deee-lite. I went out and played with them and they were the stars, that was cool.
You know, I like playing music and playing guitar, and I like to draw, so I thought I would end up just probably barely making a living, or probably having to have some other job, but being involved in one of those things that I really like to do. But that didn't work out like that.
I'm not interested at all in playing more than 12, 15 tournaments a year on an annual basis because like all the old guys out here on this Tour, we've played golf for nearly 30 years of our lives.
I started playing guitar at, like, 12 or 13 and just rock bands mostly. I had a punk rock band and hard core bands and all that.
A friend of mine introduced me to Thurston Moore because she thought I would like him. He was playing with the tallest band in the world, the Coachmen. They were sort of like Talking Heads, jangly guitar, Feelies guitar. Anyway, it was love at first sight. His band broke up that night. And we started playing.
This is extremely challenging when you sound like a 12-year-old girl, and you decide your first personal endeavor is to play, like, a - like, a very macho dude.
I started playing in my first band when I was 12. I like to date myself by saying I was in a New Age band when it wasn't ironic; it was actually called new wave because it was new.
When you're 12, a 12-year-old girl is so out of your league, because they have no interest in you. You're like 10 years younger. You're 2 to them.
Later in high school, I met Hillel Slovak, who was the original guitar player of the Chili Peppers, and we became really close. We had a band, and we didn't like the bass player, so I started playing bass, and I got a bass two weeks later.
The first band I was ever in, I played guitar. We did Gary Glitter and Green Day covers at the time. We were called Fizz. I have no idea why we picked that. We were, like, 12 years old.
Inside I feel much like a 12-year-old or a 17-year-old who knows big words.
What was weird, as a 12-year-old actor, was being expected to behave like an adult while still being treated as a kid everywhere else.