We started in 1976, jamming, and we played our first show on Valentine's Day 1977, so we can mark 40 from there, or we can mark 40 from 1979 when we did our first record.

One time, when I was in my teens, jamming in a Kansas City club, I was doing all right until I tried doing double tempo on 'Body and Soul.' Everybody fell out laughing. I went home and cried and didn't want to play again for three months.

Education does not mean jamming information into somebody's head. Rather, it's that ancient idea that all knowledge is within us; to teach is to help somebody pull it out of themselves.

To me, a sure-fire way to get in a rut is by sitting around playing by yourself for too long. You've gotta get out there and jam, man! You don't have to necessarily be in a band, all you've gotta have are a couple of buds who play too. They don't have to be guitarists either; jamming with a bassist or a drummer is cool.

There was an old acoustic in the house that my mother had given me for my fifth birthday. I took it off the wall and started jamming. I was seven years old at the time.

I think the best riffs and the best songs come when you're jamming and having a good time.

And I knew in my bones that Emily Dickinson wouldn't have written even one poem if she'd had two howling babies, a husband bent on jamming another one into her, a house to run, a garden to tend, three cows to milk, twenty chickens to feed, and four hired hands to cook for. I knew then why they didn't marry. Emily and Jane and Louisa. I knew and it scared me. I also knew what being lonely was and I didn't want to be lonely my whole life. I didn't want to give up on my words. I didn't want to choose one over the other. Mark Twain didn't have to. Charles Dickens didn't.

I sat in at every club in New York City jamming with musicians because it felt right - and because it felt right and we were having fun - the people dancing and sipping their drinks in the clubs felt it too and it made them smile.

I sing both in my shower and in my car mostly in my car because I have this weird thing - whenever I'm singing to the radio - my friends kind of hate it - but I pick out the harmonies in my head and I'm singing the harmonies to the tracks and I'm jamming it out.

I'm jamming 'Black Sabbath Vol. 4' all the time. Zappa's 'Cruising With Ruben & The Jets.' A lot of Gong lately. Some Hawkwind. The Residents' 'Duck Stab' is amazing. Some Fugs. Lots of stuff man. I'm pretty schizophrenic with records.

It's very hard to write a song alone. It's only by jamming that you can get a song together.