10. T. RexElectric Warrior
That must have been high school. A video played before MTV was around [on Top Of The Pops], it was ‘Bang A Gong (Get It On)’, Elton John played on it and really it was another song. It wasn’t ‘Bang A Gong’ and there was this moment where Marc Bolan jumped and it wasn’t even on time, and I think, "That’s fucking cool! Goddamn it, how cool is this?" Such a wiseass thing to do. Either that or I guess they wanted to play the album version and they probably didn’t make a video at that time and they just slathered that on. His guitar has a kind of bluesy effect, obviously his lyrics and vocal style I like – [imitates Bolan] – and I just thought this was a cool, cool record. I feel cool when I listen to it – I feel like the coolest guy in the world, just as cool as shit!
Bolan took the blues and made it a lot more palatable. I love blues music, but after a while it’s like, "Aw man, here we go again!" That would be like water dripping on my head if I listened to that all day. I appreciate it, goddamn it, I do, but in small doses. The A minor pentatonic – one thing I learned from the blues is get the fuck away from that pentatonic scale! I played with Link Wray one time – I played one song with him, I forgot! – and his thing to me was: "Joey, I don’t want to hear any pentatonics there", and I just went out, I didn’t even practice, thinking, "I’ll just wing it!" I went out there and got so nervous, I threw in a pentatonic scale! I hope he didn’t hear me! And he went, "Come on Joe!" He wanted me to put my leg on the monitor, total rock star, and I was thinking, "I won’t do this! Please don’t make me do this!" And I did it! I just felt like a douchebag. And funnily enough, we were playing at the House Of Blues.
