Richie Sambora

You can’t copy anybody and end up with anything. If you copy, you’re working without any real feeling.

Playing gives me as much good feeling now as it did when I was a bitty kid.

I think that it is important to try to sound like someone, especially early in your development.

Play what you feel, feel what you play.

I do the best I can with any instrument I get attracted to. But they’re just tools in order for you to express yourself and that’s really the upshot of it.

I’ve tried all my life to avoid copying. If I can’t be myself, there’s no point being in Jazz.

I’m using the insides of sounds to move around in a very subtle way which, I think, ends up being inevitable. I feel its the only solution to that particular problem that I presented myself.

I am attracted to Jazz music for the idea of being in the moment and communicating to people spontaneously.

Jazz Improvisation means that practice is not as straightforward as it would be when you simply have a score to play.

There’s a spiritual satisfaction that one gets from listening and playing good Jazz.

Just don’t give up trying to do what you really want to do. Where there is love and inspiration, I don’t think you can go wrong.

You may be sitting in a room reading this book. Imagine one note struck upon the piano. Immediately that one note is enough to change the atmosphere of the room – proving that the sound element in music is a powerful and mysterious agent, which it would be foolish to deride or belittle.

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

Jazz music has got to have that thing. You have to be born with it. You can’t even buy it. If you could buy it, they’d have it at the next Newport festival.

I’m my own most merciless critic onstage.