Jeff Beck

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

I’m an experimenter. It’s rich because every album I’ve done, except for a couple of techno-y records, are different. Really you’ve got to hand it to the Fender Strat, because there are songs in that guitar. It’s a tool of great inspiration and torture at the same time because it’s forever sitting there challenging you to find something else in it, but it is there if you really search.

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 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?

[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

[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 you hear somebody with balls, that’s me.

The more you listen, the more your hear.

Music can’t save the world, but can make one a little calmer.

You’ve got to learn your instrument. Then, you practice, practice, practice. And then, when you finally get up there on the bandstand, forget all that and just wail.

I am a writer – that is what I am before being a performer or musician. I love waking up in the morning and then going to sleep that night with something that did not exist.

I’m now a legend, whether I want to be or not.

Music, of course, is what I hear and something that I more or less live by. It’s not an occupation or profession, it’s a compulsion.

Listening is more important than anything because that’s what music is. Somebody is playing something and you’re receiving it.

Jazz can only enhance the Classical side and Classical can only enhance the Jazz side.

We really never know what we’re gonna play when we get on stage.

Those who wish to sing, always find a song.

Jazz isn’t the kind of music you’re going to learn in 3 or 4 years or get because you have talent for music.

Despite the fact I’m a professional performer, it’s true that I have always preferred playing without an audience.

Jazz music just resonates with the frequency of me.

When you are so strongly drawn to music, you can’t ‘not’ be a musician.