Is it true that you first declared that you wanted to be a rock star in a copy of Dr. Seuss’ My Book About Me?
“It is true. I knew what being a rock star was from an early age. I knew it meant making music, having people like it, and travelling all over the world. It seemed fucking badass. I wanted to be The Beatles, the Stones, Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, Pink Floyd, David Bowie, AC/DC, KISS… I could go on and on. I also knew it wasn’t a safe path to be on and that it’d be a gamble, but I’ve always been a bit of a gambler.”
What’s the most important lesson you learned from your parents?
“My mum’s probably my heart and my dad’s probably my drive. They got divorced when I was pretty young, and I was the oldest of three. I got the love of music from my mum, for sure, and being a musician was her secret dream too, which my uncle told me when she passed. It was a really tough time, and he gave me the confidence to give it a shot. My dad is a really tenacious individual. He’s got fucking drive but he’s also stubborn as fuck, so nothing will knock him off his path. He does what he feels is right and that’s it, and I got that from him.”
It was your dad who bought you your first guitar, right?
“Both my parents did, kind of. I got my first guitar from my mum, which was around the time of Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours [1977], which is still one of my favourite records of all time. She was dating a guy who’d play guitar while she played organ. He showed me a few chords, and I played a song within the first 10 minutes so he said, ‘You should get him a guitar.’ So she got me a little Spanish guitar; I messed around with it but it ended up in the closet. I wanted an electric guitar like my heroes. I cut out a picture of a Les Paul and put it on my Christmas list, and was really disappointed to open the guitar-shaped present to find it was another acoustic guitar. I was a totally shitty kid when I opened it, and my dad said, ‘If you learn to play that I’ll get you a Les Paul.’ I only really got the bug when I got an electric guitar.”
When you’d caught the bug, what came next?
“My cousin Kyle was about a year younger than me, and he’d gone to this swap meet and got this stereo called a Soundesign, which was a radio receiver with an 8-track cassette tape in the front, a turntable on top, two speakers, and on the back it had a guitar jack. There was a guitar that came with it too, which only had two tuning pegs and two strings. He only spent about $5 on it, but he was mad at me for about a year because I didn’t give it back. We’d laugh about it later. He’d say, ‘If I knew that was what you’d end up doing, I’d have just given it to you!’”