My guitar only has five strings ‚cause the top one broke and I decided not to put it back on: when I play chords I only play bar chords, and the top one always used to cut me there.

I do seem to like to combine the dramatic emotional warmth of strings with the grooves and body business of drums and bass.

I taught myself how to play the guitar, I taught myself how to play the drums, and I kind of fake doing both of them. But drumming comes more natural to me, and it just feels better.

There are strings in the human heart that had better not be vibrated.

I was probably 7 years old when I started playing the guitar and writing some serious songs.

Sometimes you stumble across a few chords that put you in a reflective place.

I’m left-handed, and it’s not very easy to find reasonably priced, high-quality left-handed guitars. But out of all the guitars in the whole world, the Fender Mustang is my favorite. I’ve only owned two of them.

I’m not suggesting people abandon musical instruments and start playing their cars and apartments, but I do think the reign of music as a commodity made only by professionals might be winding down.

I would love to study guitar or trumpet.

I never wanted to sing. I just wanted to play rhythm guitar – hide in the back and just play.

I always use the same guitar; I got this guitar years and years ago for nine pounds. It’s still got the same strings on it.

The fibers of all things have their tension and are strained like the strings of an instrument.

My body is damaged from music in two ways. I have a red irritation in my stomach. It’s psychosomatic, caused by all the anger and the screaming. I have scoliosis, where the curvature of your spine is bent, and the weight of my guitar has made it worse. I’m always in pain, and that adds to the anger in our music.

Out of all the guitars in the whole world, the Fender Mustang is my favorite. They’re cheap and totally inefficient, and they sound like crap and are very small.

Anything that encourages people to pick up an instrument and play, I’m fully behind.

Instruments sound interesting, not because of their sound, but because of the relationship a player has with them. Instrumentalists build a rapport with their instruments, which is what you like and respond to.

I own a ’66 Jaguar. That’s the guitar I polish, and baby – I refuse to let anyone touch it when I jump into the crowd.

I taught myself to play the guitar by listening to Paul Simon records, working it out note by note. He is an incredibly intelligent musician. He’s not someone who has a natural outpouring of melody like McCartney or Dylan, who are just terribly prolific with musical ideas.

I have to practice to be good at guitar. I have to write 100 songs before you write the first good one.

I think maybe people see bands and musicians as some sort of superhero unrealistic sport that happens in another dimension where it’s not real people and not real emotions. So, I grew up listening to Beatles records on my floor. That’s how I learned how to play guitar. If it weren’t for them, I wouldn’t be a musician.

I like to combine the dramatic emotional warmth of strings with the grooves and body business of drums and bass.