The music I'm playing now is the music I always imagined myself playing when I was a kid. It's been nice to use my instrument a bit more - play the guitar in a more fun way with riffs and stuff like that - rather than just propping up a whole song with a guitar and my vocals. There's so much more energy in the crowd as well; they've been bouncing around and having fun, and it's nice to feel like you're a part of something in a room rather than just performing for a crowd.
When I was touring with Ozzy, you know, when I was with Manson, we toured with Ozzy, so many times, we did Ozzfest a thousand times, and, you know, it seems like I'm always playing with Ozzy in one way or another opening up.
As a musician, I don't think I'm the greatest guitar player. I'm a bigger fan of the drums than I am the guitar; I just happen to play guitar. I play drums almost every day at my house. I wrote a lot of songs behind the drum kit, just having the music and vocals in my head and playing the rhythm.
In my own musical existence I don't feel that being a guitar player is like the best thing on earth to be. I would rather be a balanced musician. Playing in a group, I'm tending to think more about the music and less about the guitar. That's just me getting older. I'm not interested in being a virtuoso guitar player or anything like that.
The vocals are the very last thing I do. So, it's kinda the opposite: with country. it's singing and guitar first, but with rock, I worry about the riff and music, vocals last.
I grew up not really listening to guitar players. Especially when I was studying music, I was just interested in piano players and arrangers and composers; I came to playing in a band from the perspective of someone who never expected to play guitar in a band.
I feel like guitar explains a lot. You can just listen to a guitar without any lyrics over it; you can just feel what kind of track it is. If it's pain... you can feel it. It sets the mood.
I don't really make a distinction because when I'm acting, I feel like an actor, and when I DJ, I feel like a DJ, and when I play the guitar, I feel like a guitar player. I don't know which I prefer. I think I just like to perform, in some way or another.
I don't think my vocals demand effects. I like reverb to a certain extent, but I don't want to hide my voice. I like stripped-down vocals, but I also like crazy, powerful, doubled vocals like in dance or electronic music.
There are a lot of people using technology that are playing to a click with backing vocals already stuck in there on some computerized thing that runs along in time to the show so they have these amazing vocals that are only partly the guys on stage producing them at the time.
I'm not gonna be bad at anything, and I want to actually be the best at anything I'm doing. So if I'm playing basketball, if I'm taking the SATs, like, there's a competitive spirit behind it. With production, it's the same thing.
I love to learn, and I started doing a lot of studying of Spanish-style music and really started getting into it and how it is just a completely different form of guitar playing. It is just like if you started speaking in a different language like Japanese or something. It is something that you have to study and work at a lot.
My kids don't really like when I sing for some reason...but they like when I play guitar. So I started writing songs just playing guitar for them.
I still do one song by myself onstage. it gives people the extremely personal thing where it's just me on guitar. But, I think the songs are better as a band. I think with all of the extra little hooks and backing vocals, it just adds to what my initial idea was.
Acting, I love it and I feel that I'm good at it, but the thing that makes me feel most alive is when I'm playing guitar and singing.
It's rare for me to sit in a room with my guitar and feel like I can't stop playing, because it just sounds so good.