Musicians tend to get bored playing the same thing over and over, so I think it’s natural to experiment.

I used to skip school and paint my face with Ace Frehley Kiss make-up.

If you improvise a riff and the crowd immediately reacts to it, you know you’re on to something.

I was lucky enough to get to see guys like Bugs Henderson, Jimmy Wallace, all those great Texas blues players.

We still get those kind of cats coming out to our shows. Once you’re into it, you’re into it for a lifetime.

To get my sound in the studio, I double guitar tracks, and when it gets to the lead parts, the rhythm drops out, just like it’s live. I’m very conscious of that.

My heroes were Eddie Van Halen – especially after Van Halen I, II, III, and IV – Randy Rhoads, Ace Frehley and dudes like that. My brother played drums and we jammed in the garage...

Always have a collection of your favorite CDs with you.

Music drives you. It wakes you up, it gets you pumping. And, at the end of the day, the correct tune will chill you down.

Lessons didn’t really work out for me, so I went to the old school, listening to records and learning what I wanted to learn.

The worst advice I ever received from my dad was to play by the book. My old man used to flip out whenever I would try to branch out and do something different. Although he...

Pantera is the only band I’ve ever been in, and at the start we used to play covers to make a living.

My old man was a musician – that’s what he did for a living. And like most fathers, occasionally he’d let me visit where he worked. So I started going to his recording studio, and...

I would just listen to records and learn what I could, then just roll it over and over and over.

When I tried to play something and screwed up, I’d hear some other note that would come into play. Then I started trying different things to find the beauty in it.

It kills me when I see some metal band trying to pass themselves off as an ‘alternative band.’

Between the record companies being the way they are and the fact that people can just download one song instead of buying a whole album, it’s hard to make a good living nowadays.

A lot of bands whine about the road and how tough it is.

I was more influenced by players like Randy Rhoads and Eddie Van Halen than by the guys in southern rock bands.

Every song is different.