Play it f**kin’ loud!
I like America, just as everybody else does. I love America, I gotta say that. But America will be judged.
Despite everybody who has been born and has died, the world has just gone on. I mean, look at Napoleon – but we went right on. Look at Harpo Marx –the world went around, it didn’t stop for a second. It’s sad but true. John Kennedy, right?
Well, the future for me is already a thing of the past.
Maybe in the 90s or possibly in the next century people will look upon the 80s as the age of masturbation, when it was taken to the limit; that might be all that’s going on right now in a big way.
I don’t think the human mind can comprehend the past and the future. They are both just illusions that can manipulate you into thinking theres some kind of change.
I’ve never written a political song. Songs can’t save the world. I’ve gone through all that.
What we hear is the quality of our listening.
When I got my first guitar my fingers wouldn’t go to the sixth string so I took off the big E and played with just five strings. I was only 6 or 7.
If you like an instrument that sings, play the saxophone. At its best it’s like the human voice
Only in spontaneity can we be who we truly are.
Love is sweeping the country.
I wasn’t interested in practicing Bach; I was too busy digging Horace Silver!
When Hank Jones had his night off, I would get somebody to take my place as intermission pianist and I’d play the show with Ella, so I would get a chance to play with Ray Brown and Charlie Smith as well.
Play what you want and let the public pick up on what you doing even if it does take them 15, 20 years.
Jazz music grabs you to the point where it never lets you go until the very last breath.
To play piano is a significant part of my life, my existence. It fulfills a very physical and spiritual need for me.
He almost adds a Chet-like sound to it.
My chops were not as fast… [but] I just learned more on what was in my mind than what was in my chops. I learned a long time ago that one note can go a long way if it’s the right one, and it will probably whip the guy with twenty notes.
There is two kinds of music, the good, and the bad. I play the good kind.
A name doesn’t make the music. It’s just called that to differentiate it from other types of music.
I use the audience as my color palette, my instrument.
