My favorite is still the one that I started off with, which is a Les Paul Standard. I've played that at every gig I've ever had. And that's my starting point in the studio.
I knew from an early age exactly what I wanted to do. I wanted to be a musician and that was it. It made life a lot easier knowing what I was aiming for.
I can't wait to start something up myself that is actually about giving unsigned bands the exposure they deserve, especially when they travel so far to play the smallest gig they've ever played in their lives.
As far as the live shows go, we're not leapfrogging all the smaller venues. We would have bypassed these kind of shows and gone straight to the Arena shows, but we didn't want to.
In a strange kind of way I know were really popular and probably the biggest band in the country at the moment, but at the same time there is this real cult thing going on.
There's a lot of people out there who have seen us once somewhere in a pub or heard our songs late night on radio. We'd done four years of it before we'd even released a single. It's put us in good stead.
We still haven't played Madison Square Garden. That's a benchmark. Something will have gone seriously wrong if we don't play Madison Square Garden for this album.
I think we raised about 20,000 pounds. There was a live performance thing so we thought we'd donate the equipment for an online charity in Britain. I hated to part with my guitar, but it was for such a great cause.
We've had a number 1 album in the UK and that was a really big thing for me. So now all we've got to do is do it in America and that will have the domino effect of doing it across the rest of the world.
You can muck around with different guitars for certain bits, but you have to have your own sound. That's your benchmark, that's your sound. I also play a Black Beauty. It sounds amazing.
