Dimebag Darrell

“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.”

“On our early demos, I was really frustrated with my recorded sound. I'd tell my dad, 'Dude, I want more 'cut' on my guitar - I want more treble.' And he'd say, 'Now, son, you don't want that...”

“When I first started experimenting with harmonics, I'd sometimes hook up two distortion boxes just to get my strings 'frying,' which helped bring out the harmonics.”

“I try to do things in one take, but doubling rhythm parts is always difficult, especially if you want things to cut the way I want them to cut.”

“I always go for that live, honest feel when I'm going for that first rhythm track. I'll never hold back on a part just so it'll be easier for me to double it later on - to my ears, it sounds...”

“Glen Tipton and K.K. Downing are the gods of double-guitar axemanship.”

“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 really d...”

“Van Halen was a huge influence on me, and 'Eruption' was the song that really leaped off that first Van Halen album.”

“To make harmonics scream, I first dump my Floyd Rose real quick, hit a harmonic with my left hand while the string is still flapping, and then use the bar to pull it up to the pitch I wanna...”

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

“The easiest place to get a natural harmonic on any string is at the 12th fret. All you do is lightly rest one of your left-hand fingers on a string directly above that fret and then pick it.”

“Some of my favorite harmonics are located between frets. There are two really cool ones between the 2nd and 3rd frets that I use a lot.”

“You can tune your guitar funky, and something's gonna come out. There's no secret to it - either you got it, or you don't.”

“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.”

“To me and my band, guitar riffs are what it's all about. We know that every time we jam on a great riff, we've got a fighting chance of writing a great song!”

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

“Man, that first Leppard album really jams, and their original guitarist, Pete Willis, was a great player.”

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

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

“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.”