John Scofield

I think the idea is now for blacks to write about the history of our music. It’s time for that, because whites have been doing it all the time. It’s time for us to do it ourselves and tell it like it is.

When you know the lyrics to a tune, you have some kind of insight as to it’s composition. If you don’t understand what it’s about, you’re depriving yourself of being really able to communicate this poem.

If someone thinks that peace and love are just a cliche that must have been left behind in the 60s, that’s a problem. Peace and love are eternal.

I try to practice with my life.

Blow your life through your horn.

Talking about music is like dancing about architecture.

Jazz is restless. It won’t stay put and it never will.

I’d like to feel that whatever I play is a result of whatever I’ve heard.

By its very nature, no one person can ever be the center of Jazz.

I keep these songs in my head until I get behind the microphone. I never spend more than 30 or 40 minutes singing the vocal or it will sound mechanical. There are always mistakes, but it’s about feeling more than being perfect.

If you have something to say of any worth then people will listen to you.

There’s millions and millions of people who think Les Paul is a guitar!

This will be our reply to violence: to make music more intensely, more beautifully, more devotedly than ever before.

Listening to the Fifth Symphony of Ralph Vaughan Williams is like staring at a cow for 45 minutes.

You don’t rehearse Jazz to death to get the camera angles.