Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
The only job I'd ever had that might be considered not playing music was teaching guitar, which I did in college for a while, but that still falls in the same category.
Some specialist guitar music is not of the highest intellectual calibre, so I must make it sound as though it is. If it bores me, it certainly won't please an audience.
I don't really have any "must work withs," but I would never refuse if a celebrity or fellow musician came along who is willing to write or sing or play on a Lita song.
The majority of my photos are taken while traveling, because everything feels new and exciting initially. Taking photos is like a way to make sense of the overwhelming.
The financial reward is great and I love the life I have, but all money makes possible is for you to stop worrying about money. Then you have freedom to live your life.
Hendrix was a different kind of guitar player. It was like, 'Holy cow, this guy can sing, he can play all this weird stuff... what is this?' It was a new kind of music.
I always use my Les Paul. I have a Hamer as well. I use a Tele and an Esquire - once in a while, I will use a Strat, and I never use any pedals... except for in my car.
... don't be afraid to screw up !... one of the key issues to learning is making mistakes ... if you're not making mistakes, you're probably not having a very good time
I loved the guitar, and I had all of this music in my head. My passion for the guitar and the ideas for what I could create musically were equal. So that's where I was.
You see, we are here, as far as I can tell, to help each other; our brothers, our sisters, our friends, our enemies. That is to help each other and not hurt each other.
It's like you're surfing... The same wave that can be a source of pain can be a beautiful flowing grace and source of power. It's all a matter of how you respond to it.
There was an old acoustic in the house that my mother had given me for my fifth birthday. I took it off the wall and started jamming. I was seven years old at the time.
Once you're on stage you can't go back, even when things go wrong people expect you to stay there and entertain them. When all else fails, you've got to try tap dancing.
We were interested in this notion of compression- a lot of the songs were really short so that you'd absorb them in memory rather than when you're actually hearing them.
But that kind of falls in line; when you think about it, James Brown was a funk minimalist. All of those parts create a sum that's larger than than the individual parts.
I directed my music to the teen-agers. I was 30 years old when I did 'Maybellene.' My school days had long been over when I did 'School Day,' but I was thinking of them.
I write very sporadically. I write sometimes three things in a week and then nothing for a year. I make a space for it but I don't push it. They just come and they come.
I've never taken a lesson in my life, and I can play every instrument there is. I play by ear, but I can fool anybody into thinking I went to some conservatory of music.
I don't wanna go on vacation. There's nothing about it that appeals to me. People look forward to doing that; I look forward to getting up every day and doing something.
Don't believe bands who say it's all about the fans and they want to give their music away for free. The result is they will continue to live in their mother's basement.
I've never gone through an audition process or anything. In most of my decisions like that, I just kind of feel it out: You know, do I feel comfortable with this person?
Government is, at every level, a means to gather in the labor and wealth of the people, and then instruct the people about new restrictions or monitoring of their lives.
You always have to reset your volume for the venue you are in. Sometimes the tubes can have you scratching your head because they react differently at different volumes.
Just because you have developed the craft on your instrument doesn't mean that you don't have the ability to be expressive emotionally on that instrument, or vice versa.
A violin neck is much smaller than the guitar's, so it's much easier to play wide intervals on one violin string. On the guitar, you really have to stretch to play them.
Much of my playing is rhythmic and choppy; I use a lot of double stops. The wah just accents all those stops and chops and brings out the rhythmic aspect that much more.
My older brother Mike is an excellent trumpet player. By the time he was 12, he was playing around Kansas City in classical situations. He was already an amazing talent.
I thought I had too much money to be happy and normal. Thousand of pounds is just too much for a working person to handle all of a sudden, and I felt I didnt deserve it.
When I've met people that work in any walk of life they say, "If it wasn't for punk I wouldn't be doing it this way." I think spiritually, it did change the world a lot.
Everything we did, we did live - and then Bobby took it home and chopped it up and edited it. Which is pretty much what they did with every jazz record you've ever heard.
I would love to expose multiple younger generations to Frank's music. It's not an easy task because It's not ever going to be plastered all over the radio for the masses.
I don't like the idea of a singer-songwriter record. I don't picture myself that way, and it's not my favorite sort of look, I guess. It's really just an aesthetic thing.
People often comment on the feeling and soul in my music, and I think part of that comes from the honesty and diversity of the kids I went to school with and jammed with.
I remember when I was first losing my ability to play my fast licks and my hands were shaking and falling off the guitar. It forced me to sort of create a new slow style.
Guitar players get inward and analytical about their playing but when you start to get positive feedback from other players it makes you think that it is coming together.
I love playing jazz because I love the freedom you have to improvise. It has given me a feeling in my classical repertoire of creating the atmosphere of the here and now.
I always wanted to know what the music behind some music was, or where it came from, and that gave me a point of reference for understanding the music I was listening to.
You get to a point where the kind of beautiful chaos can't really fuel your creative existence any longer because it's not stable, however amazing and exciting it may be.
My inspiration comes from the message Duke Ellington gave - you are unique, be yourself, put out that thing that is you, then use your work ethic and produce great music.
[My] style evolved, not changed, but I think evolved as I grew and matured. I don't think there was any kind of change I did in a deliberate way - I think I just evolved.
In the past, I have not been able to hear myself. I play with feeling so I need to hear what is coming out of the amplifier to inspire me; I don't just play mechanically.
When I drank, I had a very different attitude towards my playing. It was sloppier but I kind of liked it that way. It was like the alcohol was telling my mind what to do.
If my musical tastes are continuing to grow up, and I am not really too interested in the music that my kids listen to, then I assume that the audience is doing the same.
It is the human things that make life good, the unexpected kindness, the friendly note, the bracing word, the neighbour's extra loaf of bread she leaves at our back door.
To go see a band in a big venue is a difficult experience. I don't really like that too much. I'm not a guy who puts on iTunes and goes, "Oh, what's hot!" I don't need to.
I've always been someone who thought it didn't matter where you were playing. I always shot for the best you could get. It never bothered me if it was small or it was big.
I didn't want to take the guitar solos down note-for-note, but more or less use them as a map, and keep all the hooks from the guitar playing, and let myself come through.
I've done a lot of talk shows where you can tell that the host is just thinking about what he wants to say next while you're answering him and that's really uncomfortable.
I didn't really escape that gravity until I moved 300 miles south to go to college at 18, where authorship no longer seemed something liable to induce vengeful punishment.
You don't need jails, you get put a thousand miles into the middle of Australia, you can go wherever you want, go ahead, but if you come into a city it's straight to jail.