“The album changed my life? I don’t even have to think about that. It was With The Beatles (released in the US as Meet The Beatles). That album was the ‘on’ switch for me, and fifty years later I’m playing in a band with Ringo (Starr). It’s pretty crazy.
“The music on that record touches me deeply inside, more than everything else that came after it. And the song that really did it for me as a kid was I Saw Her Standing There. When I heard the guitar solo, George’s solo, I wanted to be that guy. Whatever makes that sound, that’s what I want to do.
“When I saw The Beatles on TV that was it. It was all sewn up. For so many people of my age, that was a game changer. There was something that resonated within me."
“I ended up working with Ringo, I worked with Paul (McCartney), and George was a friend and we played together. To know those guys and work with them is so weird, but wonderfully weird.
“And there’s another really weird thing: a story about when my mother was pregnant with me. She was nineteen years old. My grandmother had very interesting friends – one of them was a psychic. This woman put her hands on my mom’s tummy and said, ‘It’s a boy. He hears the music. When he’s seven years old, something’s gonna change. And the world is going to know who he is.’
My mother was like, ‘Great – a musician! I wanted a doctor.’ And when I was seven years old, I heard The Beatles, got a guitar, it changed my life, and here I am. So that’s freaky shit – I wasn’t even born yet and it was all figured out.”
