Pat Metheny

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

Jazz is an idea that is more powerful than the details of its history.

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

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

Jazz is not something that can be defined through blunt instruments. It is much more poetic than that.

Listening is the key to everything good in music.

It don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing.

To play without passion is inexcusable.

Everybody that you could name would join in our audiences from, Laguardia on down. Everybody came. Everybody came to the Cotton Club.

What I can say is that for may years jazz musicians had to go to Europe, for instance, to be respected and to be sort of treated not in a discriminatory way. I don’t think there is anything controversial about me saying that. This is just a fact. …. Europeans really provided many venues over there and hailed the jazz artists, and a lot of musicians went over there and stayed over there for a long time. A lot of them moved over there, lived over there, and died over there.

That’s the beauty of music. They can’t take it from you.

Back in college, when I got kicked out of school, I was still in school, I’d just written the song that got me my record deal. If I hadn’t gotten kicked out of school I wouldn’t be where I am now. Three months after that, I got my record deal and the rest is history.

Music allows the great opportunity to play with people you love.

What are you going to do when you love music? You can’t stop.

The other day I came across a recording I made of a night at my apartment when I was living with Kris Kristofferson. Bob Dylan had been around earlier and we were all passing around the guitar. Whenever it came to my turn I would run into the kitchen and say I’d left the coffee on the stove or something. Shyness. Scared to perform.

Jazz standards are our contribution to music history.

The essentials of Jazz are: melodic improvisation, melodic invention, swing and instrumental personality.

Everything I record, I just try to sound like me and come up with songs that suit what I do and then just go for it. I never know what the public’s going to like, anyway.

When you’re creating your own shit, even the sky ain’t the limit.

A Jazz musician is supposed to find his voice, find his niche and do his thing.

A movie and a stage show are two entirely different things. A picture, you can do anything you want. Change it, cut out a scene, put in a scene, take a scene out. They don’t do that on stage.