Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I get that same queasy, nervous, thrilling feeling every time I go to work. That's never worn off since I was 12 years-old with my dad's 8-millimeter movie camera.
I spent a lot of time on film sets with my dad at work, and as a kid, that's a very appealing thing, to watch grownups get to play dress-up and pretend that they're different people - and then get paid for it!
I was always impressed by how much my dad went out in the yard and played with me and my siblings when we were kids. I'm sure he was tired coming back from work, since he traveled a lot. But he always took time out of his day to go out in the yard.
Well, Steve Vai joined my dad's band right around the time when I actually started playing guitar. So he gave me a couple of lessons on fundamentals, and gave me some scales and practice things to work on. But I pretty much learned everything by ear.
As soon as I was tall enough, my dad used to let me drive him 60 miles or 70 miles to work. That was pretty fun. My dad was really old. At the time, he was 82 years old. He said, 'Can you drive?' and I said 'Yes.' I guess I didn't find it to be that crazy.
Feminists of my mother's generation argued that both mom and dad should work a little less and each do some of the household chores. My parents, for example, split everything 50/50. Even though my father is a terrible cook, he still made dinner exactly half the time.
One of my earliest memories is my father telling me to behave because I'm about to meet and work with the greatest actor of all time. Then this old guy comes out and I was like, 'Pfff, he doesn't look anything like Luke Skywalker, I don't know what my dad is trying to tell me here.'
I grew up - my dad, every time I was with my dad, he was always - not always, but he wrote. He's a writer. So he was always in his office writing. He made a plan and, like, a point of, 'This is my work. I'm going to do this every day for these amount of hours.' So I think that's where I got, like, a work sort of ethic.
My mother's dad dropped out of the eighth grade to work. He had to. By the time he was 30, he was a master electrician, plumber, carpenter, mason, mechanic. That guy was, to me, a magician. Anything that was broken, he could fix. Anybody anywhere in our community knew that if there was a problem, Carl was there to fix it.