The Big Band Era is my era. People say, 'Where did you get your style from?' I did the Big Band Era on guitar. That's the best way I could explain it.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
I've been through this fame thing before, when the band was big in '80, '81.
Something happened in the nineties. There was a shift. I don't want to blame it on grunge or the rise of indie - but that was basically it. It was seen as dirty and kind of ignorant to have these ambitions, to want to be a big band.
Because usually in the past when I was in a big band, that was all I did.
I was a fairly good amateur musician, and I was an average professional. But the one thing I saw was that the big band business was fading.
I grew up in that era of Hendrix and Joplin and The Doors, and the Summer of Love and Haight-Ashbury, and even the Panthers. That was my era; that's what I was into.
When I first started in rock, I had a big guy's audience for my early records. I had a very straight image, particularly through the mid '80s.
I should have lived through the '80s, not been born in it. My style is a mix of hip-hop and '80s casual.
I started a big band when grunge was popular. I mean, that didn't make much sense.
I didn't start to collect records and listen to guitar players properly until I went to art school, when I'd already been playing for five years. So my style was already formed, and that's why I think it's so unique.
Style has always been very important to us. We grew up in the '70s. Music was glam rock, punk rock and a very stylish movement.
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