John Mayall

I never really thought about becoming a professional musician.

Check out the albums, … Check out the live performances. That’s the reality of it all. Music is such an energizing thing.

Everybody I know in England was raised on Mose Allison.

If you have something in your life worth celebrating, you can put it in a blues song.

I always make it a point to pick songs on which players really shine.

I do the best I can with any instrument I get attracted to. But they’re just tools in order for you to express yourself and that’s really the upshot of it.

Music gave me the energy to revise, revive myself; renew, rebirth myself. It was a palliative, a relief.

To keep creating you have to be about change.

Man, as long as people want to hear Jazz, I’ll give it to them.

I only knew classical music, which to me was the only true music. The only way I could survive at the bar was to mix the classical music with popular songs, and that meant I had to sing. What happened was that I discovered I had a voice plus the talent to mix classical music together with more popular songs, which at the time I detested.

I’m on some singer’s record date for a demo and I get a note to call Miles Davis. Of course, I didn’t believe it, but I wasn’t going to take a chance by not calling, and it was Miles. He said, ‘I’ve got a session in an hour over at Columbia, can you make it’

Jazz standards are our contribution to music history.

The melody is generally what the piece is all about.

Creativity and artistic endeavors have a mission that goes far beyond just making music for the sake of music.

What I learned the most from Prince was putting art first, being creatively ambitious, and putting creativity at the forefront of what I do.

Some twenty years ago, during the course of a memorable evening at the Stravinskys’ home in Los Angeles, the venerable maestro turned to me and said in no uncertain terms: ‘My dear, you should conduct your own music. All composers should conduct their own music!

I’ve always liked the Freddie King/B. B. King rich tone, and at the same time, I like the manic Buddy Guy/Otis Rush Strat tone. So I’m always caught in the middle of the Gibson and Fender sounds. If I’m playing my black [Fender] Strat, and I’m in the middle of a blues, I kind of wish I was playing a [Gibson] Les Paul. Then again, if I was playing a Les Paul, the sound would be great, but I’d be saying, “Man, I wish I had the Stratocaster neck!”

If a guy is gonna to play good bop, he has to have a sort of a bop soul.

I just remember always trying to emulate Dinah Washington, hanging out in my bedroom closet.

I never have any trouble playing anything I can think of. The trouble is thinking of what to play.

Gershwin was right in his time, at his time. Everybody else was behind.