John Mayall

Check out the albums, … Check out the live performances. That’s the reality of it all. Music is such an energizing thing.

I write songs about real things… The subject dictates the mood and it goes from there, really.

I have good health and I am happy to be on the road all the time.

I always make it a point to pick songs on which players really shine.

If you have something in your life worth celebrating, you can put it in a blues song.

I managed to pick out some pretty special people.

Check out the albums, … Check out the live performances. That’s the reality of it all. Music is such an energizing thing.

Play what you want and let the public pick up on what you doing even if it does take them 15, 20 years.

Let me whisper it. Let me sigh it. Let me sing it, my dear or I will cry it.

What don’t I want to learn? I have how-to books, history, nature. Ain’t nobody here saying, ‘You’d better learn this.’ But I still think I’ve got a head on my shoulders, and it pleases me.

When I began listening to saxophones, I was first attracted to Coleman Hawkins.

I went through a lot of mental pains and anguish about choosing between jazz and classical. I realized that where I functioned was where I should be, and where I functioned was in jazz, so that was it.

There is two kinds of music, the good, and the bad. I play the good kind.

I always try to teach by example and not force my ideas on a young musician. One of the reasons we’re here is to be a part of this process of exchange.

I used to play a place in Twist, Arkansas… It used to get quite cold in Twist. And they used to take something that looked like a big garbage pail and set it in the middle of the floor, half-fill it with kerosene. They’d light that fuel and that’s what we’d use for heat… But this particular night, two guys started to fighting and one of them knocked the other one over onto this container. When they did it spilled on the floor. Now, it was already burning so when it spilled it looked like a river of fire. Everybody ran for the front door including yours truly. But when I got on the outside then I realized that I’d left the guitar inside. I went back for it. The building was a wooden building and it was burning so fast that when I got my guitar it started to collapse around me. So I almost lost my life trying to save the guitar. But the next morning we found that these two guys who were fighting were fighting about a lady. I never did meet the lady but I learned that her name was Lucille. So I named my guitar Lucille to remind me not to do a thing like that again.

If you have something to say of any worth then people will listen to you.

Get around, be on the scene, play it clean, be seen, be keen and be over eighteen.

I’m using the insides of sounds to move around in a very subtle way which, I think, ends up being inevitable.

People love us when we play what we want to play but we’re starving.

Jazz is a white term to define black people. My music is black classical music.

I think that it is important to try to sound like someone, especially early in your development.