Roland Kirk

Inspiration grows into full-scale creation through persistence and imagination.

Do it again on the next verse and people think you meant it.

Sometimes I sound like gravel and sometimes I sound like coffee and cream.

I am very aware that so little has happened to the electric guitar from the time that it was conceived to now; where there are so little changes made where there should be drastic changes made. If we were to put our heads together and start thinking about modern technology we would be much more advantaged with the electric guitar than we are. I think that we’ve been stagnant for many years.

Typically I go in the studio and whatever I’m contemplating that day will wind up being a song. I don’t come in with lyrics… I just go in and let it happen.

When Bird came on the scene, it was shocking as in the Bible: everything was dark and then there was light.

Jazzmen are our surrogates for the unpredictable, our paladins of constant change.

Play the music not the instrument.

Perhaps it is a peculiarity of mine that despite the fact that I am a professional performer, it is true that I have always preferred playing without an audience.

Music should never be harmless.

Inspiration may be a form of superconsciousness, or perhaps of subconsciousness – I wouldn’t know. But I am sure it is the antithesis of self-consciousness.

Man, you tell a story.

When you are so strongly drawn to music, you can’t ‘not’ be a musician.

I was walking down the street, and I saw a sewer digger on his lunch hour open his lunch pail, dig out a harmonica, knock out the cracker crumbs, and play a bunch of tunes on it. I was fascinated by that harmonica, so I stared the guy out of it. I just stared at him. He said, ‘Here, kid, take it. Get out of here.’

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