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Yes and for two reasons: one, I couldn't find anything to imitate at the time, and secondly because what I heard on the radio didn't bear any resemblance to what I wanted to hear on the guitar.

When I was a kid, I remember trying to emulate Stevie Wonder's sound, and Donny Hathaway's sound. It's just part of who I am - I'm just a soulful kind of dude.

I think the voice does that perfectly adequately without being imitated by other instruments.

I tried to emulate my favourite guitar players, the old bluesmen like Blind Willie McTell and Big Bill Broonzy. I used to sit by the record player and copy Chuck Berry and the Beatles. You can never copy someone completely, so you end up developing your own style.

A lot of things you just stumble into: relationships or ways of putting characters opposite one another that really worked. So then it's not always so much about imitating other people, but imitating yourself, at least in your thinking.

When I hear myself singing, I hear Iggy Pop and Jimi Hendrix. There's a conversational thing going on. I suppose it depends on which The Pretenders song you're listening to.

I was probably a bit of a mimic when I was a kid, and I used to imitate people.

It was fun while it lasted, but it never seemed real to me. I could not believe I was in Van Halen.

Oh, yeah, I've always thought of covering some of my influences like Billy Joel, Elton John, Stevie Wonder.

You'd have to be completely crazy not to be influenced by and take from other artists. It's completely impossible not to.