Jeff Beck

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

[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.

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

A Les Paul, which is kind of a sissy guitar compared to a Strat anyway. The Les Paul is heavier, but because of that bulk you can do bends on it more easily. Also, the Les Paul’s lack of a vibrato arm means you’re not wrestling against the spring-loaded bridge all the time. The Strat is the ultimate because it’s like having a miniature pedal steel within it. Once you get familiar with it where the bends are and where they meld down into a fourth or whatever, you can do all kinds of pedal-steel-like things, which I think are cool..

I don’t care about the rules, if I don’t break the rules at least 10x every song then I’m not doing my job.

My Strat is another arm, it’s part of me. It doesn’t feel like a guitar at all. It’s an implement which is my voice.

For me, there wasn’t a line between working and getting paid or simply playing for fun.

Jazz is the only music in which the same note can be played night after night but differently each time.

Rather than say I play Jazz, I simply say I play music.

I can tell whether a person can play just by the way he stands.

Is there a meaning to music? Yes. Can you state in so many words what the meaning is? No.

Sometimes you have to play a long time to be able to play like yourself.

[on Django Reinhardt] This was a man who changed my musical life by giving me a whole new perspective on the guitar and, on an even more profound level, on my relationship with sound…During my formative years, as I listened to Django’s records, especially songs like ‘Nuages’ that I would play for the rest of my life, I studied his technique. Even more, I studied his gentleness. I love the human sound he gave his acoustic guitar.

All that I’ve played, all that I’ve sung, I couldn’t have done any other way.

Jazz has an aesthetic intimacy, a romantic transference.

Even now, at 82 years old, if I don’t learn something every day, you know what I think? It’s a day lost. Now, I don’t practice every day. I just take the guitar, swear at it. But I should be swearing at myself. But I fool with music. I’m doing something musically all the time. And my ears are wide open for anything I can hear.

All of the technique doesn’t matter… only if the feeling is right.

I’m a fan first. I believed Duke Ellington when he said there’s no bad music, just some of it is presented badly. As a kid, hanging around Church Street, the presentation of music was so powerful, I couldn’t help but jump for joy. I had discovered art, or truth, or whatever you want to call it; I had seen a light I’d follow forever.

I’d solo on my guitar; then sing; then solo; then sing some more. one stopped when the other started. That way I felt a continuity, not a conflict, like a wheel that keeps turning. Both sounds – guitar and voice – were coming out of me, but they issued from different parts of my soul.

Life is not about finding our limitations, it’s about finding our infinity.

Jazz music just resonates with the frequency of me.