Let my children have music.
Anyone can make the simple complicated. Creativity is making the complicated simple.
Most of the soloists at Birdland had to wait for Parker’s next record in order to find out what to play next. What will they do now?
Creativity is more than just being different. Anybody can plan weird; that’s easy. What’s hard is to be as simple as Bach. Anyone can make the simple complicated. Creativity is making the complicated simple.
I always wanted to be a spontaneous composer.
I’m too busy playing. When I’m playing I don’t pay attention to who’s listening. When I was listening I listened to symphony orchestras, Beethoven, Bach, Brahms, Stravinsky. You don’t listen to one instrument; you listen to music.
In my music, I’m trying to play the truth of what I am. The reason it’s difficult is because I’m changing all the time.
I, of course, wanted to play real jazz. When we played pop tunes, and naturally we had to, I wanted those pops to kick! Not loud and fast, understand, but smoothly and with a definite punch.
Only the French, I guess, really use tenor and alto to any great extent in the orchestra.
Jazz is the sound of surprise.
Jazz music is a style, not compositions; any kind of music may be played in Jazz if one has the knowledge.
I prefer no one to teach me. I prefer to swing on my own.
I used to play pianos in bars. You know in hotels, you’d see guys playing piano with a snifter? That was me, with a painted-on mustache. I was about 15.
I developed in my head that I’m never any better than my last concert or the last time I played, so it’s like an audition each time. You get nervous just before going onstage. I still have that, but I think it’s more like concern. You’re concerned about the people – like meeting your in-laws for the first time.
I think pop music is one of the few things in the 20th century that have made giant strides in reverse.
I kind of hate the fact that people are always trying to put you into a category. I hate walls, and I hate boundaries. I don’t like that. I listen to everything.
I start in the middle of a sentence and move both directions at once.
Actually, I think the more Ben [Taylor] sings, the less like James he sounds.
I am a writer – that is what I am before being a performer or musician. I love waking up in the morning and then going to sleep that night with something that did not exist.
Les is an old friend of mine. He gave me this special white Les Paul – he wound the pickups himself – for my birthday, first time I met him. I play everything from heavy metal to blues to jazz on it. He just hit it right on the head when he designed the Les Paul. I like it better than most girlfriends I’ve had. The godfather of rock ‘n’ roll, I call him. Without him, none of us would have a job.
Music is the great arbiter of the world, the key to central harmony and a necessary requirement of human emotion.
There’s so much music out there and so many possibilities. I like anyone who plays any instrument.
