Les Paul

Of the whole bunch of guys who play hollow body guitar, I think Herb Ellis has the most drive.

..I wanted to create music that was so different that my mother could tell me from anyone else.

Leo wanted me to be partners with him – for it to be the Fender guitar: the Les Paul Fender. When he approached me with the idea, he brought over a guitar and he gave it to me and I have it here. And I thought, if I’m gonna do this I’m going to go with the biggest company in the world: Gibson. Why should I fool around with some guy who is not a musician – I should go to the Gibson people.

The audience, they’re not professionals. They just love music. It isn’t necessary to play over their heads to be admired.

It’s not technique — it’s what you have to say.

When I got my first guitar my fingers wouldn’t go to the sixth string so I took off the big E and played with just five strings. I was only 6 or 7.

People will always need love, romance, a tender touch and really personal and deeply felt music.

You have to sound sad first, then maybe later you can sound good.

Jazz musician is a combination entertainer, poet, singer, educator, student, artist, seducer and all-round good fellow.

A chimpanzee could learn what I do physically, but it goes way beyond that. When you play, you play life.

First I was working on classical music that didn’t move me at all. I hated it. So I decided to discover the kinds of classical music that did move me—like Chopin, Satie, Beethoven, and certain Mozart songs. Mozart would play a counterpart with his left hand while using his right to mock it. It was blue, dark, shadowy and it made me feel something. That’s when I realized music was inside me.

Jazz music has always been a place where anything is possible.

If T-Bone Walker had been a woman, I would have asked him to marry me. I’d never heard anything like that before: single-string blues played on an electric guitar.

Good Jazz is when the leader jumps on the piano, waves his arms and yells. Fine Jazz is when a tenorman lifts his foot in the air. Great Jazz is when he heaves a piercing note for 32 bars and collapses on his hands and knees. A pure genius of Jazz is manifested when he and the rest of the orchestra runaround the room while the rhythm section grimaces and dances around their instruments.

Trying to play the new concept with a outward bound feeling.

Let your life be your music and let your music be your life.

It seems like I always had to work harder than other people. Those nights when everybody else is asleep, and you sit in your room trying to play scales. I just wonder where I was when the talent was being given out, like George Benson, Kenny Burrell, Eric Clapton… oh, there’s many more! I wouldn’t want to be like them, you understand, but I’d like to be equal, if you will.

I was not prepared to play the role of singer in the camp of the warriors

I’ve always had a deep love of live performance, it’s when I feel most alive.

It’s like an act of murder; you play with intent to commit something.

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