This is music I've known since I first started to play the guitar. Ray's music was one of my inspirations: He was a super soul-music man, but he was also a jazz musician, too. I see him as the height of honest expression.

Music took a bunch of average-Joe Christians who could play electric guitar and sing and threw them into the limelight. But we were not a bunch of Billy Grahams.

Guitarists should be able to pick up the guitar and play music on it for an hour, without a rhythm section or anything.

Forget all that macho shit , and learn how to play guitar.

MTV don't play music no more, so I don't know if we can do that, but we're going to really try to knock it down with this one, ... It's a great song, it sends a good message. It sends that message to people that you always don't have to be a gun-totin', mean mother ... we're all human beings.

Yes, I always feel that the music I like, and I genuinely like, the stuff I play on the radio is my own way of going out on the street and righting these wrongs that I think should be righted.