Libba Bray

I kinda went back to that period between ’88 and ’94 where I felt like I was the most creative, without being hindered by powers that be. I was no longer going to try to hinder myself to what I thought was going to be on the radio.

I like to sleep. There is no set time of day for sleep. You sleep when you’re tired and that’s all there is to it.

In my opinion, I think sarcasm and humor in a song, without turning it into a novelty song, is really charming.

Deep, unspeakable suffering may well be called a baptism, a regeneration, the initiation into a new state.

Without jazz, life would be a mistake.

Mozart in his music was probably the most reasonable of the world’s great composers. It is the happy balance between flight and control, between sensibility and self-discipline, simplicity and sophistication of style that is his particular province… Mozart tapped once again the source from which all music flows, expressing himself with a spontaneity and refinement and breath-taking rightness that has never since been duplicated.

I grew up with the piano. I learned its language as I learned to speak.

As a young cellist I had played to an audience that had included Pablo Casals and reacted with poor, nervous playing. Casals sought me out after the concert and praised me highly, somewhat easing the pain and thinking him a very kind man.

The arranger doesn’t get any royalties, but I had so much fun doing it.

I am very aware that so little has happened to the electric guitar from the time that it was conceived to now; where there are so little changes made where there should be drastic changes made. If we were to put our heads together and start thinking about modern technology we would be much more advantaged with the electric guitar than we are. I think that we’ve been stagnant for many years.

In classical music, only two people are important, the composer and the conductor. Everybody else is a serf. In jazz, a thing of beauty is created collectively with everybody getting to express an idea. And that reflects what democratic society is – or should be.

There are four qualities essential to a great Jazzman: taste, courage, individuality and irreverence. These are the qualities I want to retain in my music.

To keep a band together you simply need a gimmick. The gimmick I use is to pay them money.

The secret is keeping busy, and loving what you do.

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.