Quotes from Dimebag Darrell

To get my sound in the studio, I double guitar tracks, and when it gets to the lead parts, the rhythm drops out, just like it's live. I'm very conscious of that.

I used to skip school and paint my face with Ace Frehley Kiss make-up.

To me and my band, guitar riffs are what it's all about. We know that every time we jam on a great riff, we've got a fighting chance of writing a great song!

To me, a sure-fire way to get in a rut is by sitting around playing by yourself for too long. You've gotta get out there and jam, man! You don't have to necessarily be in a band, all you've gotta have are a couple of buds who play too. They don't have to be guitarists either; jamming with a bassist or a drummer is cool.

I love jamming with my band because the guys inspire me every time. We all get off on each other's playing.

When I play live, I jump around like an idiot for an hour-and-a-half or more under a lighting rig that's hotter than hell.

My first killer amp was a Sunn Beta Lead. It was solid-state, but that Sunn was incredibly loud. I used to say to my friends, 'Hey, check it out. It's only on two.'

Spittin' blood, smokin' guitars, fire everywhere - Kiss is where I started.

I've tried to force a solo before, but sometimes it's like, 'That thing don't really fit, man!'

I'm into the whole song-as-a-piece-of-music thing: if it literally doesn't call for it, if it already has enough stuff going on, then it's okay not to play a solo.

Play the pentatonic blues scale, just for fret- and pick-hand dexterity and to mesh them both together.

The most common power chord in metal is the root/fifth, but root/third diads are also worth checking out.

People that love this form of music have loved it from way back - Sabbath, Zeppelin, the early days.

Make your heart bleed! Put your soul into that damn thing. And try new things.

My whammy system is set up so I can yank the bar up as well as do dive-bombs with it. This means that if I accidentally push down on the bridge with my palm, my strings go sharp and sound out of tune. I make sure this never happens by never resting my hand on the bridge when muting. I always do my muting just in front of the bridge.

You can tune your guitar funky, and something's gonna come out. There's no secret to it - either you got it, or you don't.

Who doesn't like to play Black Sabbath tunes!

I can never understand how a solo could ever be 'uncool.' Play something good, and it won't be uncool, you know?

'I'm Broken' was a sound check riff.

I'm into sounds, man.

The local dudes who knew that my dad owned a studio would say, 'Ahh, dude is spoiled,' and this and that. But we didn't abuse it at all. I'd always ask if we could use the studio first, and if our dad didn't want us there he would tell us, and that was that. But I definitely tried to get down there as often as I could.

My old man was a musician - that's what he did for a living. And like most fathers, occasionally he'd let me visit where he worked. So I started going to his recording studio, and I really dug it.

Musicians tend to get bored playing the same thing over and over, so I think it's natural to experiment.

I love 'Dogman' by King's X and Living Colour's 'Stain.'