I listened to classical guitar and Spanish guitar, as well as jazz guitar players, rock and roll and blues. All of it. I did the same thing with my voice.

As a guitar player, you can gravitate to the blues because you can play it easily. It's not a style that's difficult to pick up. It's purely emotive and dead easy to get a start with.

I'm not a jazz singer.

My songwriting and my style became more complex as I listened, learned, borrowed and stole and put my music together.

I think the women - Lauryn Hill, Mary J. Blige, Erykah Badu - are doing new conceptual things and using their voices to create new American music.

I was a guitar player first off.

I feel fortunate that I was able to step away from it when I wasn't interested.

My earliest influences were things I heard in my household.

I love working with the quartet. I have more freedom and flexibility.

I love all kinds of music.

A lot of what I have always done is do other singers.

From the time I moved to San Francisco in 1967 to play with the Steve Miller Band, there was a lot of support in the music community for one cause or another, but this one was special because it was put on by people who understood where musicians' hearts are.

I'm easily distracted by other things in the world around me.

I think that it can be said of a lot of artists, and myself included, that we made the same record over and over from the beginning.

Quite frankly, I've always listened to the black side of the radio dial. Where I grew up, there was a lot of it and there was a lot of live music around.

I'm still trying to re-create a Ray Charles concert that I heard when I was fifteen years old, and all my nerve endings were fried and transformed, and electricity shot through me.

The short answer is, yes, I think I have become a better singer.

I am not a jazz singer. I wouldn't place myself on that footing. I wouldn't even enter that arena.

This is a cause that musicians can take to heart because one of our main reasons for being is to share our music with other people, and this takes us to people who probably wouldn't otherwise get to hear music on quite this level.

My parents were music lovers and collectors. It was around.

I felt that, in retrospect, there was a time in the late Seventies, after I had a string of hits and successes, as a performer and a recording artist, that I wasn't saying anything.

As far as other instrumentalists, I used to love mellow sax players like Paul Desmond. I love piano.

I listened to classical guitar and Spanish guitar, as well as jazz guitar players, rock and roll and blues. All of it. I did the same thing with my voice.

I would say that I'm finding my voice in more ways than one.

There is not a lot that keeps me glued to the radio as I used to be.

My first love was the sound of guitar.

I really just followed my musical instincts every step of my life.

There's a whole lot of songs that men just can't do. The words are from another time and represent too much of an emotional commitment, whereas women can say that because of who they are.

I had given up the guitar between '75 and '78. I completely lost interest. I was sick of hearing other guitar players and I was tired of my tunes.

Every time the guys were knocked out by my guitar playing and the girls were knocked out by the type of songs I did. That set us apart from the average blues band.

I play piano and guitar. Acoustic guitar. I tried studying classical guitar when I was 16 but it got really hard. I could never play a lead to save my life.

Oh yeah, I mean, it wasn't a very good guitar, most good guitars have got thrust rods in the necks that you can adjust or that'll keep them in shape, you know keep them straight. This one just, well it turned into a bow and arrow after a couple of months.

In OK Computer, the guitar was already moving towards a tone generator as well as a riff generator.

Cool things happen. Ace's guitar flies through space, goes through a hole, and blows up. I throw drumsticks and they come flying at you.

Yes, I took up the guitar when I was about 14 or 15, in high school.

I keep a guitar around while writing and will improvise music. I do this for several reasons, such as that it's fun, and sometimes it helps me with the meter.

I like to play guitar, jam out, play the blues, go watch movies. I love movies.

Arranging is the way I put my stamp on my music as much as my guitar playing.

Look what venison does to a goofy guitar player from Detroit? I'm going to be 54 this year and if I had any more energy I'd scare you.

An uncle of mine emigrated to Canada and couldn't take his guitar with him. When I found it in the attic, I'd found a friend for life.

Because I don't play guitar any more, African harmonies and rhythms have been an inspiration to me. I love the raw origin of the sound. It complements my voice and words naturally.

I think its so cool that you can pick up the guitar and create something that didn't exist 5 minutes ago. You can write something that no ones ever heard before. You have music at your fingertips.

So, my big brother was playing guitar and I figured I'd try it too.

I don't understand why some people will only accept a guitar if it has an instantly recognizable guitar sound. Finding ways to use the same guitar people have been using for 50 years to make sounds that no one has heard before is truly what gets me off.

I didn't want to get attached to one guitar; I didn't want to have an instrument that was irreplaceable.

I don't really know why I chose bass except that it was different than guitar.

Except for a few guitar chords, everything I've learned in my life that is of any value I've learned from women.

I told my father I wanted to play the banjo, and so he saved the money and got ready to give me a banjo for my next birthday, and between that time and my birthday, I lost interest in the banjo and was playing guitar.

I just like simplicity. I like simple songs, I like simple chords, simple vocals, simple lead guitar. I just like simplicity. That's just the way I like it.