Chick Corea

Without a doubt, my richest relationships are my long-term friendships with musical partners, because we make music together. That’s what we love to do with our lives.

I got a chance to listen to and watch Thelonious Monk and his quartet play two shows a night, for six weeks. It was a great education. There was my university, man.

You don’t have to be Picasso or Rembrandt to create something. The fun of it, the joy of creating, is way high above anything else to do with the art form.

I call myself a teacher because they want me to call myself a teacher, but actually, what I’m doing is I’m studying.

Only a spiritual being has awareness.

My one thing is I continue to be interested and want to be a student. I don’t want to be a master. When I’m learning something, I’m in my element.

Jazz affirms the noblest aspirations of character, individual discipline, perseverance and innovation.

Jazz speaks for life. This is triumphant music.

Les Paul was one of the great innovators of the early electric guitar, and he made some fantastic guitar records. To me, Les Paul is very much it.

Players are coming from other backgrounds: rock, folk, ethnic music. It’s changing Jazz for the better.

I’m very shy, and I shy away from people. But the moment I hit the stage, it’s a different feeling I get nerve from somewhere; maybe it’s because it’s something I love to do.

I say this because it’s a good message to give to young talents who feel as I used to. You hear musicians playing with great fluidity and complete conception early on, and you don’t have that ability. I didn’t. I had to know what I was doing. And ultimately it turned out that these people weren’t able to carry their thing very far. I found myself being more attracted to artists who have developed through the years and become better and deeper musicians.I believe in things that are developed through hard work.

No, working is what will keep you alive.

I used to play a place in Twist, Arkansas… It used to get quite cold in Twist. And they used to take something that looked like a big garbage pail and set it in the middle of the floor, half-fill it with kerosene. They’d light that fuel and that’s what we’d use for heat… But this particular night, two guys started to fighting and one of them knocked the other one over onto this container. When they did it spilled on the floor. Now, it was already burning so when it spilled it looked like a river of fire. Everybody ran for the front door including yours truly. But when I got on the outside then I realized that I’d left the guitar inside. I went back for it. The building was a wooden building and it was burning so fast that when I got my guitar it started to collapse around me. So I almost lost my life trying to save the guitar. But the next morning we found that these two guys who were fighting were fighting about a lady. I never did meet the lady but I learned that her name was Lucille. So I named my guitar Lucille to remind me not to do a thing like that again.

In this era it’s harder for musicians to get together, … Back in the ’80s, we were all at the clubs, you ran into people all the time. Now, everybody’s kind of in their own room with their computers. I use making an album as an opportunity to connect with musicians.

I haven’t a great Jazz band and I don’t want one.

You never master the instrument. You always just strive to get better.

You could go out and eat and come back and the note would still be playing.

Jazz has an aesthetic intimacy, a romantic transference.

The only award I’ve ever worked for or wanted really were the ones that were given to me by the fans. So, whether it’s a platinum record or hit songs, those are the ones that last the most.

I think I had it in the back of my mind that I wanted to sound like a dry martini.