Eddie Van Halen Quotes

Oh, playing everywhere and anywhere ? from backyard parties to places the size of your bathrooms to you name it. And we did it all without a manager, without an agent, without a record company. I guess the main thing that really got us going was the Pasadena Civic. We used to print up flyers, with some local people helping us.

I never really sit down and really practice, like set myself in a little room and go, "All right, I'm serious now." (Laughs). You know, I just sit around and whenever I get bored, I play my guitar.

Okay, there was church music, then Bach popularized tempered tunings, and now we?re playing chainsaws on stage and lighting them on fire. How?s that? [laughs] Basically, since Bach there?s really been nothing new under the sun.

Yeah, I guess I was blessed with good enough ears to pull it off. I won fist prize three years in a row out of 2,000 kids. And the judges would make remarks like, "Hmm, very interesting interpretation of Mozart." And I'd think, Oh, shit, I thought I was playing it right! But I guess they got off on the fact that I put myself into it.
(on winning piano competitions)

That's why my favorite pianist was always Vladimir Horowitz. He had such a great sense of humor in his playing, and he always put his own improvisation on Bach of Chopin or whatever he was playing.