Jeff Beck

[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’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.

[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

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

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.

When Jazz broke through in England, I remember sneaking to listen on the radio much to my parent’s disapproval.

Jazz has always been a man telling the truth about himself.

I kept thinking there’s bound to be something else? I could hear it sometimes, but I couldn’t play it.

In my music, I’m trying to play the truth of what I am. The reason it’s difficult is because I’m changing all the time.

The Blues and Jazz will live forever. So will the Delta and the Big Easy.

I’m a big fan of music, a student. I just wanna learn and keep enhancing my education about Jazz.

So much of Jazz doesn’t have an audience other than music students or musicians.

Practice as if you are the worst, play as if you are the best!

I always liked the steel guitar. I also love the guys that play the bottleneck. But I could never do it; I never made it do what I want. So every time I would pick up the guitar, I ‘d shake my hand and trill it a bit. For some strange reason my ears would say to me that sounds similar to what those guys were doing. I can’t pick up the guitar now without doing it. So that’s how I got into making my sound. It was nothing pretty. Just trying to please myself. I heard that sound.

My improvisations are a beguiling mixture of the vertical and the horizontal.

I am an improviser, I improvise music. Whatever you want to call it, it’s all improvised music. I may capture it and go back and write it down for others, but it was originally improvised.

People involve themselves with the superficiality of Jazz without digging for its soul.

Playing is my way of thinking, talking, communicating.

For me, the most important thing is the element of chance that is built into a live performance. The very great drawback of recorded sound is the fact that it is always the same. No matter how wonderful a recording is, I know that I couldn’t live with it–even of my own music–with the same nuances forever.

I learned my songs from the birds of the Brazilian forest.

I became a singer to sing my songs. They’re so hip who else is going to sing them?