Ian Gillan, Roger Glover and I wanted to be a hard rock band - we wanted to play rock and roll only.
So when I got to be about 13 or 14, I started listening - even though my parents music was way cool - to contemporary hard rock at that time, which was Aerosmith, Cheap Trick, Black Sabbath, AC/DC, Ted Nugent and all that, and that's just where I came from.
I have always felt I was more accurately a Hard Rock musician.
I like mellow music. I like some jazz. But I'm not a big hard rock guy.
Hard rock for me is AC/DC, Def Leppard, Tesla, Kiss. Metal tends to be louder, ruder, darker, like Judas Priest, Slayer, Iron Maiden.
The Rolling Stones have been the best of all possible worlds: they have the lack of pretension and sentimentality associated with the blues, the rawness and toughness of hard rock, and the depth which always makes you feel that they are in the midst of saying something. They have never impressed me as being kitsch.
When I founded the first Hard Rock, no one was serving American food in London; McDonald's wasn't there, Burger King, etc.
Few bands in hard rock history have been so adept at balancing the awesome and trivial as Van Halen in their prime.
I write almost all my songs on an acoustic guitar, even if they turn into rock songs, hard rock songs, metal songs, heavy metal songs, really heavy songs... I love writing on an acoustic because I can hear what every string is doing; the vibrations haven't been combined in a collision of distortion or effects yet.
I like hard rock, and classic rock, and even metal.