Jeff Beck

I play the way I do cause it allows me to come up w/ the sickest sounds possible. That’s the point now isn’t it?

[Stratocaster vs Les Paul] It’s a totally different animal. One is for very subtle and, I would say, more musical things that you can distract and abuse. You can’t do that with a Les Paul. It’s too delicate. It’s got a very delicate tone; most people don’t ever realize that because they are plugged into monstrous amplifiers which completely, instantaneously covers up the unique sound quality it has. All those years of development go straight out the window when you overload the amp.

When Jazz broke through in England, I remember sneaking to listen on the radio much to my parent’s disapproval.

I love it when people hear my music but can’t figure out what instrument I’m playing.

[on Django Reinhardt] By far the most astonishing guitar player ever … Django was quite superhuman, there’s nothing normal about him as a person or a player

A Les Paul feels like a guitar and I play differently on that and I sound too much like someone else.

You only go around once and this ain’t no rehearsal.

Every time I see a musician – it doesn’t matter what age – that inspires me, there’s always a secret little wish that maybe we’ll play together, because that’s how I learn and grow and so forth, you know. But hopefully there’s a lot more.

You compose because you want to somehow summarize in some permanent form your most basic feelings about being alive, to set down some sort of permanent statement about the way it feels to live now, today.

I first fell in love with the piano, I knew it was me. I was dying to play.

Being a Jazz musician is not a rose garden!

When I was coming up, I practiced all the time because I thought if I didn’t I couldn’t do my best.

The violin, the saxophone, the trumpet: Each makes a very different sound but the very same notes. That’s pretty heavy, you know ? Imagine how many different races make up the human race. I’m called colored, you’re called white, he’s called something else. We still got an asshole and a mouth. Pardon me.

I don’t try to please when I play. I try to cure.

Jazz music is the power of now.

I try stuff. I synthesize what’s of value with some of the other things I have at my disposal.

It’s not uncomfortable for me to be a sideman, but I feel more comfortable as a bandleader.

The memory of things gone is important to a jazz musician. Things like old folks singing in the moonlight in the back yard on a hot night or something said long ago.

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?

I don’t know anything about music. In my line you don’t have to.

When you listen to a pianist, each notes should have an identity, each note should have a soul of its own.