It was Elton John that got me into music

But I can´t remember which song. He was the first artist I started listening to and he´s one of the greatest of all time. Great song-writing, a lot of feeling, amazing lyrics...even before I understood what it was about.

 

Red carpets are always weird, it´s always uncomfortable

It´s cool that your peers or your fans or the industry recognise you. As far as numbers and winning awards, that´s nice, but it ain´t why I do this. We´ve had a lot of success and I guess those achievements speak better than a hunk of plastic or metal that sits on your mantel.

 

I don´t even remember the first guitar I bought.

It was a Korean-made Strat from a swap meet. I bought my first real guitar on payments when I was working in a music store in Texas – I was about 18. I still have it. It´s the one most people recognise me playing – a 1984 G&L Rampage.

 

When I was a kid I wanted to be Angus Young or Ace Frehley

Kiss get a lot of flak, it´s very fashionable to slag them off, but I think they were a very important band in rock history. They certainly were for me, when I was younger. They had good, basic rock songs, and nobody had that larger than life persona. For a young kid that was an important period. Those old records have some amazing songs.

 

If you´ve followed us over the years you´ll get our sense of humour

You´ve probably seen us making asses out of ourselves on Headbanger´s Ball, and I think any band can relate to that. We´re not the cornerstone on having a good timeor being smart asses! I guess everybody took the music very seriously, even though we didn´t take ourselves as serously as we took the music! That certainly came across with all of the bands of our era and it wasn´t just in Seattle, it was all over the world.

 

I used to jam with guys who were far better than me.

Probably because I was always interested in learning and getting better, so I´d try to learn from them, and it seemed to work out pretty good! They were a couple of years older than me, maybe had a band and had done gigs, and I´d hang out with them until I was on their level or surpassed them, just absorbing as much as I could. Then when I felt it was time to move on, I´d do that, until I met the guys in Alice.

 

Grunge was never a popular word for any of us in Seattle.

Before that word, it was referred to as the“Seattle Sound“, and I liked that because, although we were all unique, there was definitely a kind of ethos, a bunch of kids making noise and playing bars and parties. All the Seattle bands shared that, because it was such a small town and we all went to each other´s gigs and hung out with each other.

 

There´s nothing mysterious about naming our album The Devil put dinosaurs here

It´s just unfortunate that we do so many shitty things to each other that just have nothing to do with facts. Like, we haven´t figured out this yet? Come on! Just accepting each other for being different. Just having this thing where you have to hate somebody else because they look different than you or like to get their orgasm different than you, it´s just fucking stupid! I´m a huge Bill Hicks fan and a huge Bill Maher fan, so I´m sure They´d dig the album title!