Les Paul

I never stop being amazed by all the different ways of playing the guitar and making it deliver a message.

When I started playing, I was playing just the harmonica. We’re back in the prohibition days. Like down a dark alley somewhere, you’d play for an illegal club that was probably right behind a police station, and what I’d do is sing and play the harmonica. It didn’t take me long to work out that I needed something more, and that was the guitar. So when you added the guitar, the harmonica and my voice, you would be talking with people mainly in the bar, or in the restaurant, or the people in the pub.

I got out of the car and there was a knife in my neck. The guy says, “Don’t move.” And the drummer got out of the car, and he got a gun in his head. This was my entrance to the South Side of Chicago. But it was necessary, because I wanted to play jazz.

I think the most important thing about playing is to walk out with confidence, look the people right in the eye and say ‘Here I am,’ and go and do your thing. As soon as they know you’re confident, they’re confident. As long as you adjust to them you’re not in trouble. You should eyeball them, find out what they want, and give it to them. They didn’t pay to come out and look at the tapestries.

We go in there and we work on altering those ideas and in many cases go in different directions.

One minute we’re over here, the next minute we’re doing something completely different. But it’s interesting because you are producing so many things you couldn’t do with analog.

I discovered very early that it wasn’t quite enough for me to imitate people.

Live music is best! Make plans to get out and support your local Jazz scene.

I haven’t got a great jazz band and I don’t want one. Some of the critics, Down Beat’s among them, point their fingers at us and charge us with forsaking real jazz . . . It’s all in what you define as ‘real jazz.’ It happens that to our ears harmony comes first. A dozen colored bands have a better beat than mine. Our band stresses harmony.

I was unfashionable before anyone knew who I was.

In Europe, they like everything you do. The mistakes and everything. That’s a little bit too much.

If I were to call it black music, that would be untrue. I don’t know what that is, unless it would be some African drums or something.

You can make a saxophone into an electric organ; you can do everything with it.

I’m not going to change the way I look or the way I feel to conform to anything. I’ve always been a freak. So I’ve been a freak all my life and I have to live with that, you know. I’m one of those people.

In fifteen seconds the difference between composition and improvisation is that in composition you have all the time you want to decide what to say in fifteen seconds, while in improvisation you have fifteen seconds.

Musicians need to continue higher learning try to expand the pallet.

Dance music-as I keep saying, you can dance to a windshield wiper… a windshield wiper that’s fairly steady gives you a beat and all you need is an out-of-tune playing ‘Melancholy Baby’ and you’ve got dance music.

[In 1969] I think lyrics have always been important to any serious writer of music.

I’m always making a comeback but nobody ever tells me where I’ve been.

I don’t want to sing anything that doesn’t come real.

Jazz will endure just as long people hear it through their feet instead of their brains.