Pat Metheny

The beauty of Jazz is that it’s malleable. People address it to suit their own personalities.

It is Jazz’s very nature to change, to develop and adapt to the circumstances of its environment.

Jazz music will continue to thrive, possibly in unexpected ways.

My first relationship to any kind of musical situation is as a listener.

People sometimes say it takes a long time to become a Jazz fan, but for me it took about five seconds.

I don’t worry too much about the fundamentalist principles that are in almost any discussion about Jazz.

I adore extravagance but I abhor waste.

I never believed in a set routine. It should depend on how you feel, because you play what you feel.

Genius is a word too often tossed around in musical circles.

I’ve always liked the Freddie King/B. B. King rich tone, and at the same time, I like the manic Buddy Guy/Otis Rush Strat tone. So I’m always caught in the middle of the Gibson and Fender sounds. If I’m playing my black [Fender] Strat, and I’m in the middle of a blues, I kind of wish I was playing a [Gibson] Les Paul. Then again, if I was playing a Les Paul, the sound would be great, but I’d be saying, “Man, I wish I had the Stratocaster neck!”

You can’t rehearse a blues darlin’.

Jazz is very much alive. Everywhere I go there’s a new generation of musicians playing Jazz music.

After the music is over it’s gone in the air. You can never capture it again.

Excessive reverence for the romantic illusion of original thought is the most fraudulent and destructive element in Jazz education.

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

It’s performing without any really set basis for the lines and the content as such emotionally or, specifically, musically. And if you sit down and contemplate what you’re going to do, and take five hours to write five minutes of music, then it’s composed music. Therefore I would put it in the classical or serious, whatever you want to call it, written-music category. So there’s composed music and there’s jazz. And to me anybody that makes music using the process that we are using in Jazz, is playing Jazz.

The more you play, the more you hear and the more you hear, the more you want to play.

Applause felt like approval and it became a drug that soothed the pain, but only temporarily.

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.

I’ve never known a musician who regretted being one. Whatever deceptions life may have in store for you, music itself is not going to let you down.

I always liked the steel guitar. I also love the guys that play the bottleneck. But I could never do it; I never made it do what I want. So every time I would pick up the guitar, I ‘d shake my hand and trill it a bit. For some strange reason my ears would say to me that sounds similar to what those guys were doing. I can’t pick up the guitar now without doing it. So that’s how I got into making my sound. It was nothing pretty. Just trying to please myself. I heard that sound.