Jeff Beck

“I've become very conscious of how easy it is for people to lie.”

“I loved Motown. I loved the musicality and the sound.”

“I don't care about the rules. In fact, if I don't break the rules at least 10 times in every song then I'm not doing my job properly.”

“I'm a very emotional person. If I've got something on my mind, that would stop me from giving my best.”

“The only way you can get Scotty Moore's tone is with a big hollowbody guitar.”

“I thought there couldn't be a better backdrop for some kind of powerful music than a big orchestra. My wish to hear how a guitar would sound in front of an orchestra has always been there.”

“If I'm on form and I'm not being bothered too much by mental problems or whatever, I can whip out something good. That's why I've done quite a few overdubs for Tina Turner and things like that, because even before she made this comeback I said yes to her, just because I love Tina Turner.”

“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 try to become a singer. The guitar has always been abused with distortion units and funny sorts of effects, but when you don't do that and just let the genuine sound come through, there's a whole magic there.”

“Sometimes when I do an overdub solo, they'll keep four or five of my attempts and then mix the bits that they like to make a solo up out of them. It's not against the rules, really - I can learn my own solos, then. But that's the whole beauty of multi-track recording, isn't it?”

“I do a very poor man's pedal steel on the Stratocaster.”

“Mahavishnu's drummer Billy Cobham was the best I'd ever heard. Not loud, that's not the secret - powerful as hell when he wanted to be - but 90 per cent of the time, he was just dancing with the drums, you know? Just like a butterfly, all over them.”

“It's a diabolical business. I can't imagine how hellish it must be to be hounded like Amy Winehouse and people like that. I have a little peripheral place on the outskirts of celebrity, when I go to premieres and that sort of stuff, which is as close as I want to get.”

“I don't organize myself sufficiently to get an album of material together, book the studio, and go. I need to be kicked; I need to be forced physically to go in. That's how it works for me. I'll get a great idea in the house, and it'll stay there unless somebody comes and drags it out of me!”

“I'm not committed to putting myself up for a blues guitarist, even though I love playing the blues.”

“The Les Paul was more challenging because of the weight of it, but the tone was there that the Fender will never have and vice versa. So you have to make a decision as to what you're going to have as your main instrument. After seeing Hendrix, I thought, 'I'll stick with the 'Strat.'”

“I couldn't not play a Les Paul guitar. Les always used to point to my Strat and say, 'Why do you have that piece of crap around your neck?' I'd say, 'Yours are too heavy. I had to drill holes in it.'”

“I was going to write an autobiography once. I started writing it, and then I thought, 'No, let them dig around when I'm dead.'”

“When they said there was gonna be about 100,000 people at Woodstock, and it went up to 200,000, I just blanked off and thought, 'I don't want to do this.' If they're filming it, it's too nerve-racking.”