Aaron Copland

Composers tend to assume that everyone loves music. Surprisingly enough, everyone doesn’t.

A melody is not merely something you can hum.

You may feel depressed, but it can’t be so depressing that you can’t move. No, I would say that people create in moments when they are elated about expressing their depression!

If you want to know about the Sixties, play the music of The Beatles.

It made no sense to ignore them and to continue writing as if they did not exist. I felt that it was worth the effort to see if I couldn’t say what I had to say in the simplest possible terms.

If a literary man puts together two words about music, one of them will be wrong.

It bugs me when people try to analyze Jazz as an intellectual theorem. It’s not, it’s feeling.

I never really thought about becoming a professional musician.

They said Bird played bebop, but Bird could still swing. I’ve heard a lot of guys play bebop, but they wasn’t swinging.

We’re here to have a ball.

I thought of nothing else but rock ‘n’ roll; apart from sex and food and money–but that’s all the same thing, really.

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

Music and life are all about style.

I thought Eric Clapton was good. He still is. Not only is he good – he’s rock’s #1 guitarist, and he plays blues better than most of us.

There’s a way of playing safe and then there’s where you create something you haven’t created before.

Anytime you strike the drums, you have to be aware that you’re creating a musical event.

Risk is at the heart of Jazz. Every note we play is a risk.

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.

I merely took the energy it takes to pout and wrote some blues.

Jazz is a feeling more than anything else.

I’m going to be on the road for the rest of my life.