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I've performed solo for 20 years now, but I don't do much of it, because if you only play alone, you go crazy and out of tune and play foolish music.

You can go crazy and play solos in the right place, and that's great because it can intensify and bring an emotional lift. But the thing is you don't want to get in the way of the song.

I think that was the whole idea behind doing the solo record was to be able to do musically whatever I wanted to do.

Any guitar solo should reflect the music that it's soloing over and not just be existing in its own sort of little world.

I think the solo playing, the decision to start playing solo, came out of having discovered what lay behind the doors that that technique opened for me.

I mean, in the course of an evening, people will take a solo here and there, but generally it's all about the rhythm of that music. Dealing with the rhythm with everything. That's essentially at least my concept of what that group is.

I start from one point and go as far as possible. But, unfortunately, I never lose my way. I 'localize,' which is to say that I think always in a given space. I rarely think of the whole of a solo, and only very briefly. I always return to the small part of the solo that I was in the process of playing.

To me, drum soloing is like doing a marathon and solving equations at the same time.

It was never the goal to be a solo performer. It was just something that made the most sense at the time.

I try to look at most of my solos as a musical piece within the song, not, say, showing off.