Time & Perspective Quote by Michael Schenker

Schenker is admitting something that guitar culture loves to mythologize and almost never says out loud: virtuosity is not the point if the player can’t feel the feedback loop. The line about “not being able to hear myself” isn’t just a technical complaint about stage volume or bad monitors. It’s a statement about agency. If you can’t hear your own instrument, you’re reduced to pantomime - fingers moving through muscle memory while the real music happens somewhere else in the room.

The intent is practical (he needs his amp audible), but the subtext is aesthetic. For Schenker, the amplifier isn’t a delivery system; it’s a collaborator. Rock guitar, especially in the post-Hendrix lineage Schenker comes out of, depends on a conversation between touch and electricity: pick attack, sustain, harmonic bloom, the way a note “leans” when it’s just on the edge of breakup. Hearing that in real time shapes the next phrase. Inspiration here isn’t a muse; it’s immediate sensory information.

There’s also a quiet rebuke to the “mechanical” guitarist: the kind of player who can execute licks perfectly yet sounds emotionally anonymous. Schenker positions feeling as a skill with infrastructure requirements. That’s a very musician’s truth: expressiveness isn’t only in the hands; it’s in the conditions that let the hands respond. In an era of in-ears, click tracks, and increasingly standardized live mixes, his quote defends the messy, human need to actually feel your own sound pushing back.