I'm not gonna say it's all done, 'cause it ain't ever all done.

Musicians tend to get bored playing the same thing over and over, so I think it's natural to experiment.

Man, don't get me started on Pat Travers. That dude writes killer blues rock and roll riffs.

Every song is different.

My whammy system is set up so I can yank the bar up as well as do dive-bombs with it. This means that if I accidentally push down on the bridge with my palm, my strings go sharp and sound out of tune. I make sure this never happens by never resting my hand on the bridge when muting. I always do my muting just in front of the bridge.

Lessons didn't really work out for me, so I went to the old school, listening to records and learning what I wanted to learn.

I was mostly influenced by bands like Black Sabbath and Judas Priest - Metallica's 'Kill 'Em All' was also a hell of an inspiration.

Using string bends instead of just playing regular, unbent notes can definitely help give certain riffs a cooler, heavier edge.

People that love this form of music have loved it from way back - Sabbath, Zeppelin, the early days.

Spittin' blood, smokin' guitars, fire everywhere - Kiss is where I started.

I got food poisoning in Venezuela, and it sucked!

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!

You can write every song on an album in E and not hurt a thing.

My first killer amp was a Sunn Beta Lead. It was solid-state, but that Sunn was incredibly loud. I used to say to my friends, 'Hey, check it out. It's only on two.'

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.

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.

Always have a collection of your favorite CDs with you.

Initially, I just used the guitar as a prop. I'd pose with it in front of a mirror in my Kiss makeup when I was skipping school. Then I figured out how to play the main riff to Deep Purple's 'Smoke on the Water' on just the E string. Next, my old man showed me how to play barre chords, and that's when things started getting really heavy.

I was lucky enough to get to see guys like Bugs Henderson, Jimmy Wallace, all those great Texas blues players.

I'm still the same cat I always was.

Whenever I feel my chops are slacking, I'll play some wide-stretch trilling exercises and take them up and down the neck as well as across it.

When I tried to play something and screwed up, I'd hear some other note that would come into play. Then I started trying different things to find the beauty in it.

If you improvise a riff and the crowd immediately reacts to it, you know you're on to something.

Towards the end with Pantera - although I was never unhappy with the music we were making - it became one-dimensional, and we wanted to open things back up.

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 dug it.

A lot of bands whine about the road and how tough it is.

I used to skip school and paint my face with Ace Frehley Kiss make-up.

Pantera is the only band I've ever been in, and at the start we used to play covers to make a living.

To get my sound in the studio, I double guitar tracks, and when it gets to the lead parts, the rhythm drops out, just like it's live. I'm very conscious of that.

It kills me when I see some metal band trying to pass themselves off as an 'alternative band.'

I would just listen to records and learn what I could, then just roll it over and over and over.

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

Washburn built me the guitar that changed my life.

I'm into sounds, man.

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.

When you're a little kid, you have nerve. I'd walk right up to whoever was recording and say, 'Hey, dude, what's the lick of the week?'

The local dudes who knew that my dad owned a studio would say, 'Ahh, dude is spoiled,' and this and that. But we didn't abuse it at all. I'd always ask if we could use the studio first, and if our dad didn't want us there he would tell us, and that was that. But I definitely tried to get down there as often as I could.

'I'm Broken' was a sound check riff.

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

The first time I heard 'Crazy Train,' I was crashed out in bed, definitely not wanting to get up and go to school, when my brother Vinnie came in and cranked it up.

To me, blues is more of a feel and a vibe, rather than sitting there and saying, 'Well, I'm gonna play bluesy now.'

I'm not a super blues player, but I was exposed to the Texas blues sound while I was growing up, and that definitely rubbed off on me.

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

The most common power chord in metal is the root/fifth, but root/third diads are also worth checking out.

Sometimes it's cool to play major third and minor third diads back-to-back, or a minor third followed by a root/fifth diad - whatever combo sounds good.

Each track has to be precise, and that is a problem on a rhythmically complex track like 'Slaughtered.'

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.

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. It'll hurt your ears.' But my dad just didn't understand.

My hair's a pain in live performance. I'm always inhaling it: I almost choked to death a couple of times.

I've become more interested in creating a band sound than trying to outshine the other guys.