Pat Smear

I don't have a favorite guitarist. I don't have a favorite solo. I don't even like guitar solos. I hate them all. There's nobody good out there. It's crazy.

The ones that stand out are from when I was a teenager, in the Seventies. The first guitar players I really loved were Michael Bruce and Glenn Buxton, from the original Alice Cooper group. They did that soloing crap, sure, but nice, short, melodic solos, so it wasn't like soloing solos. Usually when you say "solos," I picture Steve Vai up there -- like, ten feet tall and hideous.

I also like Mick Ronson. He's not the best guitarist ever, but he's the coolest -- ever. He looked cool, played cool, everything was just so cool. And, of course, he played guitar on "Jack and Diane," too.

I think Steve Howe from Yes is the best. He's not a typical math-rock guitarist. He never used distortion but he still thrashed, which I could never figure out. And who isn't a fan of Eddie Van Halen? When that first record came out, I wanted to fucking kill myself! I said, "I'm wasting my fuckin' time, aren't I?"

There aren't any guitarists anymore who are going to light the world on fire. Maybe everything's been done. Once Eddie Van Halen hit the scene, he did everything that hadn't been done -- and that was it. I started liking the emotional guitarists, like Kurt [Cobain] and the punk-rock guitarists. I thought they were more like it.