Dimebag Darrell

“Who doesn't like to play Black Sabbath tunes!”

“The harder stuff has always done it for me. Man, if it rips, I'll give it a thumbs up!”

“Washburn built me the guitar that changed my life.”

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

“You can write every song on an album in E and not hurt a thing.”

“Play the pentatonic blues scale, just for fret- and pick-hand dexterity and to mesh them both together.”

“The local dudes who knew that my dad owned a studio would say, 'Ahh, dude is spoiled,' and this and that. But we didn't abuse it at all. I'd always ask if we could use the studio first, and if our dad didn't want us there he would tell us, and that was that. But I definitely tried to get down there as often as I could.”

“I use some pretty radical harmonics at the beginning of 'Heresy.'”

“I'll sleep anywhere!”

“The worst advice I ever received from my dad was to play by the book.”

“I'm into the whole song-as-a-piece-of-music thing: if it literally doesn't call for it, if it already has enough stuff going on, then it's okay not to play a solo.”

“Losing control of your pick on stage sucks, so I scratch some deep X's into both sides of my pick with something sharp, like a dart.”

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

“It kills me when I see some metal band trying to pass themselves off as an 'alternative band.'”

“When I play live, I jump around like an idiot for an hour-and-a-half or more under a lighting rig that's hotter than hell.”

“Yeah, nothing feels better than knowing that I can put a guitar in my hands at any time and rip - even when I'm taking a crap!”

“With the right outlook, you can learn to entertain yourself and entertain each other so you can enjoy doing what you're doing. There's obviously gonna be highs and lows, and the trick to it is to be able to maintain composure and stay high even when you're in the lows. That way, when you hit the highs ,it'll be twice as killer.”

“If you wanna get out of a rut bad enough, it'll always happen. It's up to you, though. No one else is ever gonna do it for you.”

“I'm not going for a soft sound. I ain't lookin' for a warm sound. My sound is warm, but I don't need tubes to do it. The Randall RG-100 is the best amp for what I do.”

“Of all the grunge bands to come out of Seattle, Alice in Chains were the greatest.”