Creativity Quote by Ian Williams

Williams is confessing a familiar rock-and-roll origin story, then quietly flipping it into a critique of how musicianship gets outsourced to gear. “I played distortion more than the guitar” isn’t just self-deprecation; it’s an admission that the early thrill was in the effect - the blown-out halo around the note, the instant bigness - rather than the note itself. Distortion becomes a mask and a shortcut, something you can “play” like an instrument because it rewards even sloppy input with attitude.

The pivot lands on craft. “The results of my strumming” frames his younger self as someone chasing aftermath: the sonic wreckage after the pick hits, the dramatic smear. When he says “Now I play the twang of the string,” he’s describing a re-centering on touch, timing, and dynamics - the unglamorous details that actually separate players. “Closer to the source” is almost a philosophy of production: less mediation, fewer layers between intention and sound. It’s the difference between spectacle and articulation.

There’s also an implied cultural timeline here. Guitar music spent decades in an arms race of louder amps, heavier pedals, bigger textures. Williams’s line reads like a late-career answer to that era: not anti-technology, but suspicious of how easily technology can become personality. The subtext is maturity - the moment you realize “tone” isn’t a preset, it’s your hands.