My personal career highlights would be getting my first No. 1 record, ‘Down in the DM’ and getting the second one now with ‘Rake It Up.’ YG Read Quote
I like to make music from a personal standpoint, and the music that feels good to me, and when the music becomes big, it’s even better because it’s an even more organic feeling than when you, like, tried to make the hit record. YG Read Quote
What I do know is rock and roll and metal never goes away, ever. It took the back seat in America in the ’90s. In Japan and South America, it was still really big. I never followed trends, so I don’t know the exact function of them. YG Read Quote
I’ve used Fender Strats with Marshalls since forever, though since I last played London, I’ve switched to my YJM Seymour Duncan pickups, and I also have a Fender YJM overdrive pedal, which is fairly new. YG Read Quote
If you suck, you’re gonna suck real bad, and if you play well, it’s going to sound really good. YG Read Quote
If I played something incorrectly, I whipped myself mercilessly. Whenever I made a mistake, I made sure that I would never allow myself to repeat it. Every guitarist wants to play well. But in reality, if good intentions were all it took, then everyone would be great. YG Read Quote
I had my own label, Rising Force Records, and made records, but had them distributed to the chains, to the retailers, but the retailers are gone – there’s no physical sales anymore – so I’m not gonna make the CDs and have ’em put into trucks to go nowhere. YG Read Quote
Every record store and record chain has folded; they don’t exist. They do not exist. And the only two outlets that would still sell CDs were Best Buy and Wal-Mart. They now have stopped selling it. There’s nowhere you can go into a store and buy a CD in America. That’s how it is. YG Read Quote
I remember when I was a kid, if you had your name on a piece of vinyl, man, you were, like, in the halls of Valhalla; all of sudden, you were hanging out with Odin and being at the table of the gods. You were the real deal; you weren’t some guy struggling in a garage somewhere. YG Read Quote
