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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.

My solo music - I get up onstage, I improvise and it's my improvisation. When I get up onstage with Fred Frith and Mike Patton, then we're improvising together. Then it's not my music; it's our music.

I think playing solo is a second rate activity, really. For me, playing is about playing with other people.

If I'm going to go out to be a solo artist, it's because I want to do something different without having to wait on someone else's schedule or hobbies or be limited by other people's prejudices. I'd be kind of stupid not to exercise that.

I think a solo moves forward the way a song does, because it's reflective of the chords that I'm considering as I'm soloing, and at the same time I'm going as much out on a limb as Frank Zappa used to, in terms of just going crazy on the instrument.

I approach music and acting the same way, through spontaneous improvisation. I never really try to rehearse anything, do it over and over, except when we're inside a take.

I never used to want rehearsals, because I was like, 'Oh, no. I'm more spontaneous. I'm a natural. I'm a one-take person.' But that was because I didn't have any training. I was going off instinct.

Solo concerts are murder, I find; I don't like doing them.

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