Ronnie Montrose Quotes

I feel very fortunate to have my ears. I'd share them with everybody but I only have two to go around.

My first experience with music was my father, he was a stereo buff and he built his own little Hi-Fi center with recorders and everything and I listened to a lot of jazz, which gave me a sensibility for melody.

Because it was the original 4 guys, and the dynamic of those 4 guys interacting together that had the power.

I shared guitars before I actually got one of my own and played a guy's Silver tone and played another guys Danelectro 12 string and it was at about age 17 that I actually started playing.

I was too broke to buy a guitar so I more borrowed guitars from friends.

I am very aware now that music is a business, but there is also a way to go about making music that is true to yourself as opposed to doing, you know, just going through the motions and making things that would just be commercially successful.

When I started reaching teenage years, I listened to everything that was on the radio like everyone else did, which was Chuck Berry, Beach Boys and then of course The Beatles, Stones. And of course in the 60's, I was completely blown away like everyone else by Hendrix, Cream, Deep Purple, Jeff Beck and all of that ... so those were my influences.

I'm pursuing soundtrack work in the southern California area and down the line I plan to make a moody, intense acoustic album. Not all acoustic, but an acoustic - oriented guitar record that I've already written most of the material for.

I was working with Bill Graham management at the time and it was obvious to everyone concerned that albums like Open Fire, while they were good for me creatively, were not going to be commercially successful.

What made me pick up a guitar? It weighed a lot less than a piano.

Everybody has their iPhone cameras, BlackBerry cameras, and I see those cameras pointed up at me all the time now, which is actually really good because of what it does for me and my band. There is no time for us not to be on our toes because they're on all the time whenever you're playing. I think it's very healthy.

Gamma was a logical progression after doing the Open Fire record.

My philosophy is, honestly, never collected anything that I don't play. I know a lot of people that collect guitars, but for me, I want instruments that I play. And if I don't play them, I don't' want to have them sitting in a closet collecting dust.

Reading and writing music is a wonderful way of getting ideas in your head down to someone else who reads and writes, but if you don't read and write, and the other musician you're playing with are trying to express something who doesn't read and write, than it's a question of "I wrote" so that you must learn from listening and from understanding where that's coming from.

But it has been a long process because I'm kind of a renaissance person.

I don't recall getting a first guitar.

It was very satisfying knowing I could come in not really knowing what I was going to do, and at the end of the session feeling that I'd really done interesting guitar work and knowing that I'd really contributed to the music.