Jeff Beck

Nothing is more annoying than a great singer getting drowned out by a loud guitar.

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

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

You stop anybody on any street, around the world, and they know who Eric Clapton is. They don't know who I am!

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.

The right time to record is when you're not quite ahead of yourself.

I have to have people around who are of a certain strain of humour. I can't deal with people who have no humour.

It wasn't the muso thing that got me recognition in the beginning. It was doing 'Wild Thing.'

Listen to the great guitarists of the Fifties. They didn't do that nasty sort of industrial distortion. They played musical compositions as solos - Scotty Moore, Cliff Gallup, Django Reinhardt. There wasn't a bad note in any of those solos. I listened to that and stayed with those rules.

A lunatic lifestyle on the road doesn't permit you to get too hip to stuff as you should.

The fun that I've had needs to be seen on the screen. I like the thought of a bunch of people laughing at what I laughed at - because my life is surreal, completely wacko.

Cliff Gallup is one of my heroes; I'd dearly love to meet him.

I like the wildness of Buddy Guy.

If the song makes it and people like it, then I guess that's all that matters, really.

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.

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

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

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.'