Nick La Rocca

There’s two things you can’t live without. Water and music.

The guitar chose me.

If I’m going to sing like someone else, then I don’t need to sing at all.

It’s true I’ve always been attracted to the jazz band in an orchestral way, rather than a band way.

You have to understand the styles and it’s good to study those that came before us.

That’s where I heard feedback first – from Les Paul. Also vibratos – even before B.B. King, you know. I’ve traced a hell of a lot of rock and roll, little riffs and things, back to Les Paul – it’s all there. I mean, he’s the father of it all: multi-tracking and everything else. If it hadn’t been for him, there wouldn’t have been anything really.

Bebop was about change, about evolution. It wasn’t about standing still and being safe.

You never master the instrument. You always just strive to get better.

Nothing else will ever capture the democratic process in sound as perfectly as Jazz.

Jazz has evolved with an inner necessity characteristic of any true art form.

Will the people in the cheaper seats clap your hands? All the rest of you, if you

I had spent many years pursuing excellence, because that is what classical music is all about… Now it was dedicated to freedom, and that was far more important.

We’re more popular than Jesus now; I don’t know which will go first, rock ‘n’ roll or Christianity.

If I’m not saying it in four choruses or less, then I’m not saying it.

Music doesn’t have to hop to be hip, as long as it swings it sings.