Pat Metheny

Jazz demands that you bring to it things that are valuable to you, that are personal to you.

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

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

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

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

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

You can play a shoestring if you’re sincere.

On my album Here, that’s the first time that I’ve really understood how I could put all the things that were happening in the world and in my life and in our lives as just human beings into one body that was just so powerful and really had a perspective. That was an opening for me and I think that naturally, there is just so much to talk about. I don’t see me getting quiet anytime soon.

Eliminating the piano means that I’ve always worked closer with the bass than most players.

I like the music. I love it and live it in fact, but for me the business part just plain stinks.

I feel like….Music is the – it’s the answer. It’s the reason.

I want to keep redefining my work and trying new things. I want my music to be able to fit into any category. I want it to float wherever my heart goes. My music is heart music; giving it any other description is dangerous.

We in the Western world suffer from too many categories and classes; we’ve forgotten that we all still have diapers on. We’ve separated music from life.

I’m now a legend, whether I want to be or not.

Music is the most interesting thing in the world.

I thought of nothing else but rock ‘n’ roll; apart from sex and food and money–but that’s all the same thing, really.

There’s millions and millions of people who think Les Paul is a guitar!

I’m fascinated with the electronic devices that we can mess around with.

All I play is truth and emotion.

I still do what I love, and I don’t really think about it. I try to make a beautiful show, so people go home happy. That’s my biggest aspiration: to make people happy.

Jimmy (Wakely) told me, ‘I don’t want you to sound so much like Dinah Washington.’ So, I thought, ‘How can I get around this?’ And one of the people I really dug was Patti Page. So I thought, ‘Oh, I’m going to sound like her.’ I actually did with a couple curly-cues thrown in for effect, but, that’s how I started getting away from the predominant Dinah influence, and getting my own style together.