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King rocks his BC Rich live (© Monster Cable)

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2. Learn when to put the guitar down

"Man, when I go home from a tour, I don't touch the guitar sometimes for a month," King says. "I chill. I get involved in my hobbies, I kick back, I don't think about music.

"A lot of people will say, 'That's wrong. You've got to practice every day.' Why? Who said so? Some dude who likes to practice scales every day? I mean, if that's what you're into, fine, go for it. But for me, there's nothing better than a break.

"Most of the time, I come back to the guitar with a renewed sense of excitement and I'm ready to really dig in and discover a lot of cool shit. I don't think that would be the case if I was just sitting in my bedroom going over exercises all day long.

"I'm not saying, 'Don't take the guitar seriously.' I'm just saying, 'Take other aspects of your life seriously too.' Be a whole person. Guitar players have this fear that if they aren't practicing 24/7 that they'll get all rusty and start sucking. I don't practice 24/7 and I don't suck. So there."

3. Be different, any way you can

"We all have our heroes, and a lot of the time we try to emulate the guys that we love," says King "But if you get too caught up in that, all you're going to be is a second-rate version of your hero, and who wants that?

"When we were coming up, I did whatever I could to be different. Like the BC Rich Mockingbird guitars I used to play - this was before I got my own signature series from BC Rich. Nobody was playing Mockingbirds at the time, at least nobody I knew. So I told myself, 'They look different, they sound different, I'm playing 'em.' Pretty soon, I had that going for me.

"Then, when it came to the role of the guitar in Slayer's music, I chose to be different there, too.When we were starting out, all the metal guitar players were concentrating 99 or 100 percent on their solos, their hammer-ons, their scales. I said, 'Fuck that.' I'm going to make the sound of this band based on rhythm. Ten percent of what I do is based on actual soloing.

"So don't do what everybody else does. If you find yourself playing what the other guys are playing, change it. If you're playing the same guitar everybody else is playing, change it. Change your hairstyle too - that always helps!"

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