Quotes about guitar
page 2

“When I was a kid, my parents got me into piano, viola, and trombone. They were the three instruments I went through. The moment I started playing trombone, which was the last one before guitar, I knew I wanted to play guitar really badly. I was a huge Metallica fan, and I’m really into Slash. I’ve always thought he was the coolest dude, and like the greatest guitar player. He’s awesome, and I love the fact that he did everything himself. He made the world of guitar fit around him, rather than him fitting around the world of guitar, which I think is really cool.”

Joe Trohman (1984) American musician

My Heart Will Always Be The B-Side To My Tongue (2004), Ultimate Guitar Interview (2008)

Love, World, Thinking, Parent

“Frank Sinatra was dignified. We don't have a Frank Sinatra, or a Patti Page nowadays. What do we have? Ashlee Simpson instead of Patti Page! I mean, look at those people - like Paris Hilton! Who are all these skanks, man? Little girls are looking up to these girls, and it's so gross. Those girls have no dignity at all, and parents are letting their kids dress up like those skanks. But what else have they got? What are the other choices? Somebody had the nerve to ask me if I wanted to play guitar on Lindsay Lohan's album! She's another one of those 16-year-old actresses, and she's making an album! Like, 'NO!”

Jack White (1975) American musician and record producer

Ha ha ha! On why dignity and celebrity don't go hand in hand Perry, Andrew (2004). "The White Stripes uncut" http://observer.guardian.co.uk/omm/story/0,13887,1349947,00.html Observer Music Monthly (accessed June 19, 2007). 2007

People, Girl, Parent

“His vocal warmup, as quoted in Guitar World (October 1990).”

Joe Satriani (1956) American guitar player

World, Quotes

“I look at you all see the love there that's sleeping
While my guitar gently weeps.”

George Harrison (1943–2001) British musician, former member of the Beatles

While My Guitar Gently Weeps (1968)
Lyrics

Love, Sleep

“Dave (Catching) played lap steel, a little guitar, keys and did a lot of drinking.”

Josh Homme (1973) American musician

Over the Years and Through the Woods, "The Bronze" commentary footage (2005)
Over the Years and Through the Woods

Drink

“That's all I wanted to do as a kid. Play a guitar properly and jump around. But too many people got in the way.”

Syd Barrett (1946–2006) English musician

Rolling Stone, December 1971

People, Way

“"Each man kills the things he loves". I recognise that in myself, in relationships, even with guitars, beautiful things that I've had and wilfully destroyed.”

Pete Doherty (1979) English musician, writer, actor, poet and artist

Definitions and objects

Love, Beauty

“An audience is just a mirror of what's happening on stage, and if what's happening on stage has love in it—real feeling and conviction and strength and purity—then we are truly reflecting them, because it is their own nature that is coming back. Everything is. The music is. For me, the only barriers in music are the barriers in the musician and in the equipment he has to use. If a musician has no barriers within himself, then there are no barriers within his music. His only battle is with the problems of expressing his true nature against the difficulties of the real world—the limits of his amplifiers and his guitar or his piano or whatever, the limits the outer world places upon the natural perfection of the spirit.”

John McLaughlin (1942) guitarist, founder of the Mahavishnu Orchestra

When describing the sources of his music
New York Times interview (1972)

Love, World, Music, Feeling

“Flowers she would pick like guitar strings, for a real good whiff of how how life behind par seems.”

Lupe Fiasco (1982) rapper

"Life, Death, And Love in San Fransisco"
Mixtapes, Friend of the People: I Fight Evil (2011)

Life, Flowers

“I saw Courtney Love have one of her heroin fits…. and break a guitar. So I pulled up a chair. What? You gotta be ring-side!”

Kathy Griffin (1960) American actress and comedian

The D-list (2004)

Love

“I saw Amadeus when I was nine years old and fell in love with Mozart. The part of Mozart's Requiem called "Lacrymosa" is my favorite piece of music ever. I always wished we could cover it, but with programming and guitars and make it cool. It's our moment to try all the things I wanted to and couldn't, so I started messing with it in Protools. Terry wrote some riffs and turned it into this awesome metal epic.”

Amy Lee (1981) American singer-songwriter and pianist

Explaining her song "Lacrymosa", in "Evanescence: Amy Lee Explains the New Songs" at VH1 News (18 September 2006)

Love, Music, Parting

“The street's alive as secret debts are paid.
Contacts made, they vanished unseen.
Kids flash guitars just like switch-blades hustling for the record machine.
The hungry and the hunted explode into rock'n'roll bands
That face off against each other out in the street, down in Jungleland.”

Bruce Springsteen (1949) American singer and songwriter

"Jungleland"
Song lyrics, Born to Run (1975)

Secret

“If you get tired of just hanging around
Pick up a guitar, spin a web of sound
And then you could be strung out all day
With lovers and clowns
Now I find myself still hanging around”

Pete Doherty (1979) English musician, writer, actor, poet and artist

"Ha Ha Wall"(with Carl Barat)
Lyrics and poetry

Lovers

“You shouldn't hear the guitar by itself. It should be part of the drums so it sounds like the drummer is playing chords -- like the snare is in A or the hi-hat in D minor. You only notice the guitar when it's not there.”

Freddie Green (1911–1987) American musician

[Denyer, Ralph, The Guitar Handbook, 2002, Alfred A. Knopf, 88, 0-679-74275-1]

Parting

“I got a bad, bad feeling my baby don't live here no more…
But that's alright i still got my guitar.”

Jimi Hendrix (1942–1970) American musician, singer and songwriter

Red House
Song lyrics, Are You Experienced? (1967)

Feeling, Baby

“I started playing music when I was really young. I didn't start off on guitar because I couldn't fit my hands around the neck and fret board. So I did the drums. And back then, all I did was hit things.”

Patrick Stump (1984) American musician

TV.com
Source: http://www.tv.com/patrick-stump/person/412086/summary.html TV.com Patrick Stump.

Music

“I can't say that I'm crazy, you know, about watching this. I don't like the person who I was back at this time, and-and, uh… I think I had all my priorities in the wrong places and I think if I were to spend to much time playin guitar as I did picking out stupid shorts and stupid hats and stupid, you know, overcoats, I would've… I would've been able to write some good songs, you know? I can't watch this version of myself and be at all happy about it. I want to… I want to strangle myself when I see this video. I was 18 years old. 18-year-old that deserved to be slapped upside his head.”

John Frusciante (1970) American guitarist, singer, songwriter and record producer

On "Higher Ground" video audio commentary - Red Hot Chili Peppers Greatest Videos

Happiness, Stupidity, Thinking, Time

“I don't want to change my music, but I like to play around with my style of music. I've always been a big fan of guitars. The beats are still quite hard and the riffs are still Basshunter, but I wanted to do something special. The lyrics are from a true story as well. It's based on me dating a girl who I thought was the one, but it didn't work out. I woke up one morning and she was doing something in the kitchen and then came through with a cup of coffee for me. I just went, 'Wow! I have to write a song now!”

Basshunter (1984) Swedish singer, record producer and DJ

Bass Generation

Music, Girl, Coffee, Change

“I'm sitting in the railway station.
Got a ticket to my destination.
On a tour of one-night stands my suitcase and guitar in hand.
And ev'ry stop is neatly planned for a poet and a one-man band.”

Paul Simon (1941) American musician, songwriter and producer

Homeward Bound
Song lyrics, Parsley (1966)

Night

“I play in a rock and roll band called The Rock Bottom Remainders. It's other authors. It's Stephen King and Amy Tan and Dave Barry and a bunch of others of us. We play to raise money for charities, because we're kind of a freak show, but we're not bad. I play a guitar and a mandocello… And since you don't know what a mandocello sounds like or how it should be played, you can say with some authority I'm the most interesting mandocello player you've ever heard. Anyhow, we're in this hotel and this maid comes in and she keeps looking at me and she smiled and she said, "I know who you are." And I said, "No you don't. Who am I?" And said, "You're Kenny Rogers." And I of course said, "No, no, no." And she said, "If you were Kenny Rogers you wouldn't say you were Kenny Rogers would you? So you must be Kenny Rogers." … So that evening I'm walking along with my guitars going to the elevator and she went up like a skyrocket, "See! I knew you were Kenny Rogers!"”

Robert Fulghum (1937) American writer

So I signed her card, "Love and kisses, Kenny Rogers."
Robert Fulghum : Philosopher King

Love, Money, Smile, Kiss

“99,9% of men are convinced that they have to live silently, with a bitter irony of the twist of fate, that means, nobody knows they're really a spy. And an amazing guitarist. Men give serious time and thought on "How would I deal with, if the rocket came down of that alley right now? Yeah, I'd handle that situation pretty well!" A spy who plays guitar at night! I basically think, you know, I'm what would have happened if James Dean had lived and discovered carbohydrates and orthopaedic shoes. You have to tell yourself this bullshit just to keep going! Cause you're constantly being reminded how redundant you are!”

Dylan Moran (1971) Irish actor and comedian

On men.
What It Is (2009)

Men, Fate, Shoe, Thinking

“Then I learned to play some lead guitar, I was underage in this funky bar
And I stepped outside to smoke myself a j
When I came back to the room, everybody just seemed to move
And I turned my amp up loud and I began to play.”

Paul Simon (1941) American musician, songwriter and producer

Late in the Evening
Song lyrics, One-Trick Pony (1980)

Learning

“What interested me about Chuck Berry was the way he could step out of the rhythm part with such ease, throwing in a nice, simple riff, and then drop straight into the feel of it again. We used to play a lot more rhythm stuff. We'd do away with the differences between lead and rhythm guitar. You can't go into a shop and ask for a "lead guitar."”

Keith Richards (1943) British rock musician, member of The Rolling Stones

You're a guitar player, and you play a guitar.
[Denyer, Ralph, The Guitar Handbook, 2002, Alfred A. Knopf, 0-679-74275-1].

Way, Feeling, Parting

“Deep down in Louisiana close to New Orleans
Way back up in the woods among the evergreens
There stood a log cabin made of earth and wood
Where lived a country boy named Johnny B. Goode
Who never ever learned to read or write so well
But he could play the guitar just like a ringing a bell. Go, go,
Go, Johnny go…”

Chuck Berry (1926–2017) American rock-and-roll musician

"Johnny B. Goode" (1958) · Live performance (1958) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ROwVrF0Ceg Song lyrics

Way, Boy, Learning, Reading

“If someone can relate my guitar solo to an exercise in a book … that's no fun at all.”

Joe Satriani (1956) American guitar player

As quoted in Guitar Player (November 1989).

Books, Exercises

“I want every girl in the world to pick up a guitar and start screaming.”

Courtney Love (1964) American punk singer-songwriter, musician, actress, and artist

On women playing rock music, quoted in 1991, from This is the Sound: The Best of Alternative Rock https://books.google.com/books?id=MdmBYULpTrAC&pg=PT72&lpg=PT72&dq=i+want+every+girl+in+the+world+to+pick+up+a+guitar+and+start+screaming&source=bl&ots=wGJk2wQvio&sig=becPFUbQgPjVPwe75eEIadx-kYg&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiCxYu6lvrTAhXjilQKHeziAZM4ChDoAQg5MAU#v=onepage&q=i%20want%20every%20girl%20in%20the%20world%20to%20pick%20up%20a%20guitar%20and%20start%20screaming&f=false (2008), p. 71 1991–1995

World, Girl

“On the artist, Charley Patton, who changed him: What happened was I was going out on a Saturday night, so I went into my mam’s bedroom, she’s got a double mirror, really kitsch 50s. So I’m in there, doing that, and she’s got an old alarm clock where the radio comes on, but she never learned how to do it properly. And it came on. […] I remember it was ten past three in the afternoon and it was winter, it was getting dark, and it was when the BBC had just started doing Telstar live things from America. It was some station in Memphis - one of those classic names, ‘RK 51’ or whatever. […] On it came and there’s this record. The satellite thing was a bit cloudy and it was a 78 record and there was compression on the radio, so it was this strange kind of musical blur with this voice coming through: Charley Patton. […] On that night I told the bass player of one of the local bands that I’d heard this record and it sounded weird, it sounded like a violin. He said, ‘No, it’s not a violin, it’s a slide guitar.’ I thought, ‘What’s one of them?”

Chris Rea (1951) English singer-songwriter

2017

Music, Learning, Winter, Change

“For me," he explains his mammoth project, "it is an obligation to know and learn to understand the various styles living within the guitar, to work with them and pursue them up to a certain point and, when I feel I have learned enough about them, to let them go again. These CDs are a form of pool, a rucksack with everything I have at the moment and what I have focused on.”

Andreas Paolo Perger (1970) Guitarist, Improviser, Composer

Süddeutsche Zeitung, August 1997, Ralf Dombrowski

Feeling, Understanding, Learning

“The man bent over his guitar,
A shearsman of sorts. The day was green.
They said, "You have a blue guitar,
You do not play things as they are."
The man replied, "Things as they are
Are changed upon the blue guitar."
And they said then, "But play, you must,
A tune beyond us, yet ourselves,
A tune upon the blue guitar
Of things exactly as they are."”

Wallace Stevens (1879–1955) American poet

The Man With the Blue Guitar (1937)

Change

“Today we play guitar. We shall not speak or write. We just play and maybe drink some blood of virgins.”

Jaani Peuhu (1978) Finnish musician

Iconcrash: Enochian Devices Blog, 2007-12-14 http://www.eurobands.us/2007/04/06/iconcrash-506,

Drink

“Tommy started to play the guitar and sing. He and I had trekked more than once downtown to the Folk Center to hear a barefoot hillbilly woman in a long, faded skirt intone Elizabethan songs and pluck at a dulcimer or to listen, frightened and transported, to a big black Lesbian with a crew cut moan her way through the blues. The People — those brawny, smiling farmers, those plump, wholesome teens bursting out of bib overalls, those toothless ex-cons, those white-eyed dust bowel victims — the People, half-glimpsed in old photos, films and WPA murals, were about to reemerge, we trusted, into history and our lives.”

Edmund White book A Boy's Own Story

Source: A Boy's Own Story (1982), Chapter Five (p. 120).

People, Smile, Way, Photo

“The subtlety of Brazilian rhythms comes from the type of instruments used. Afro-Cuban music has a scraper called the güiro which is played with a solid stick producing a loud scraping noise. This same instrument is paralleled in Braziliam music with the reco-reco, the difference being that the reco-reco is much smaller, less resonant, and played with something like a brush. The cabasa is a gourd wrapped in beads that is incapable of extremely loud noise. The same is true of the chocalho or cylinder, and the tambourine. A regular set of drums contrasts this. The result is a light rhythm that, unlike the conga, bongos and timbales of Afro-Cuban music, does not engulf the listener but permeates him. To this is usually added the guitar (unamplified) played finger-style, which completes the subtlety.”

Clare Fischer (1928–2012) American keyboardist, composer, arranger, and bandleader

From "Clare Fischer on Bossa Nova" http://www.mediafire.com/view/fix6ane8h54gx/Clare_Fischer#3f6344g3cshffpj in Downbeat (November 8, 1962), p. 23

Music, Light

“I was consumed by a sea of people with heaven-bound hands, their eyes full of adoration for the guitar-carrying man on stage who, from his gentle doe eyes to his scraggly brown beard and flowing hair, served as stock-image white Jesus placeholder.”

Chris Stedman (1987) American activist

Source: Faitheist (2012), Chapter 3, “Conversion and Confusion” (p. 37)

People, Sea

“I've always believed that any instrumentalist is basically just an accompanist to the singer and the words. That's born out of being a fan of records before I was a fan of guitar players -- I'm interested in melody, lyrics, and the overall song. I don't like to waste notes, not even one. Who was it that said, "The reason why all those guitar players play so many notes is because they can't find the right one"? I like to put the right note in the right place, and my influences have always been those kinds of players. Keith Richards comes to mind, and I really like Nils Lofgren's soloing, because he's so melodic. I love John Lennon's rhythm playing, and George Harrison was an incredible guitarist.
There's a lot of guitar culture that I don't like at all. I find the traditional idea of the guitar hero to be really irrelevant to the 1990s. I don't think that young people are that impressed with some guy brandishing Spandex trousers and a hideously shaped guitar, playing that kind of masturbatory, egotistical noise. Being a soloist who wants to just display virtuosity is a dated philosophy, and I don't think there's any room for it in pop music. It's the last stand of late-'60s/early-'70s rockism, and it should have gone a long time ago.”

Johnny Marr (1963) musician

from an interview by Joe Gore, Guitar Player(January 1990).

Love, People, Music, Guy

“I don't think the music is all that different, actually. It is produced and presented in a different way. I don't favour one type of music over another. I like music that is melodic, so I like what I am doing now. I haven't abandoned guitars, I am just a little less angry than I was then. I am still proud of Eve's Plum, and I think they could be Vitamin C songs, and some Vitamin C songs could be Eve's Plum songs. I really like this one, it is the best one of all.”

Colleen Fitzpatrick (1972) American singer and actress

Attributed

Music, Way, Thinking

“On working at La Passione (1996): Day one, the damage was done. All it was meant to be was one hour of a little boy’s dreams. And I had things I wanted to do with the guitar that hadn’t been done before. Like, there’s one number called "Olive Oil", where I was actually playing slide guitar in the same scale as a saxophone. […] But then in came millions of executives from America. So in the end, it fell flat on its arse. And it came out the same week that Britpop took off. Blair had just won the election. Oasis. Spice Girls. So something a bit Fellini-ish – about a little boy who loved red cars – went straight over the top. It was like, ‘Well, don’t you have a 335 guitar with a Union Jack on it?’”

Chris Rea (1951) English singer-songwriter

2015

Love, Dreams, Cars, Girl

“William I’m sorry I let my brother hoist you up the mast in that crappy jury-rigged bosun’s chair while everybody laughed! William I’m sorry I could build better fires than you could! I’m sorry my stack of Christmas cards was always bigger than yours! … William I’m sorry I invented bop jogging which you couldn’t do! I’m sorry I loved Antigua! I’m sorry my mind wandered when you talked about the army! I’m sorry I was superior in argument! I’m sorry you slit open my bicycle tires looking for incriminating letters that you didn’t find! You’ll never find them! … William! I’m sorry I looked at Sam but he was so handsome, so handsome, who could not! I’m sorry I slept with Sam! I’m sorry about the library books! I’m sorry about Pete! I’m sorry I never played the guitar you gave me! I’m sorry I married you and I’ll never so it again!”

Donald Barthelme (1931–1989) American writer, editor, and professor

“The Apology”.
Great Days (1979)

Love, Books, Christmas

“Pot put me in a position where I could walk far away from my playing and hear it in the second person. It helped me step away from myself. I stopped seeing the guitar as a thing I'm holding in my hands and started seeing it as a thing that's at one with outer space and nothingness.”

John Frusciante (1970) American guitarist, singer, songwriter and record producer

High Times Magazine, July, 1995, http://www.invisible-movement.net/articles/1993-1997/1995-07-hightimes

Help, Personality

“The rest of the band [Soundgarden] thought it was silly of the press to concentrate on the beefcake when I was writing songs, singing, and playing guitar for the band. Even now, some people will stick a paragraph about my hair in the body of a review.”

Chris Cornell (1964–2017) American singer-songwriter, musician

Interview with Details Magazine, December 1996 https://pitchfork.com/features/article/10081-chris-cornell-searching-for-solitude/, Soundgarden Era

People, Singing

“The simplest way that I can understand therapy is that we're born a certain way, we're taught to be something different, and we spend our whole lives trying to unravel it and ultimately align ourselves with who we really are. Life, experiences, traumas -- whatever -- they all add up to make you some altered version of what you are. So there's this battle that goes on between what you are and what you become, and it's been very important for me to unravel what I was taught to be or what I became. and to draw a direct parallel to music -- the closer I get back to being who I really am, the stronger the music gets, because I think what talent I do have is connected to that person, it's not a manipulative process, it's intuitive. You can learn about chords and guitars, but there's a piece of you that makes it individual, and it's been a slow process for me to become whatever it is that I'm supposed to be.”

Billy Corgan (1967) American musician, songwriter, producer, and author

Smashing Pumpkins (1996)

Life, Music, Way, Understanding

“Of course that's Bud and Laurindo. I liked Laurindo very much, and I love some of the tunes he does. In fact, I've been doing some piano transcriptions of some guitar things of his, and we recently recorded a tune of his. This particular thing again—how are you going to equate it? As jazz? As Brazilioan music or what? I wiould much rather hear Laurindo in his native habitat. I know he and Bud have been associated this way before, yet I don't feel that a real good rapport goes on between them. The constant mixing—half-jazz, half-Brazillian—I don't think it's good. You lose certain features of the one when you try to come out with the other. Let's give that three stars.”

Clare Fischer (1928–2012) American keyboardist, composer, arranger, and bandleader

Reviewing "Tocata" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a940h3-1NV0 from Brazilliance; as quoted in "Clare Fischer: Blindfold Test" http://www.mediafire.com/view/fix6ane8h54gx/Clare_Fischer#rjvay58eo774rhe

Love, Music, Way, Feeling

“My first [guitar] lessons lasted two weeks and it was "Jingle Bells." It didn't make any sense at all. I wanted to know how to play like Hendrix…”

Joe Satriani (1956) American guitar player

As quoted in BAM Magazine (6 April 1990).

Sense

“Some people are like "Oh, I hate guitars." How can you hate a guitar? It makes no sense. It's just an instrument.”

Andrew Sega (1975) musician from America

AeschTunes interview with Iris http://www.angelfire.com/music5/aeschtunes/interviews/iris.html

Hate, People, Sense

“Me and my brother used to spend a lot of time at music festivals, running away from skinheads. Then my brother became a skinhead… I used to get excruciatingly, mind-numbingly dull guitar lessons from my father: tonic, subdominant, dominant. Yeah, but how do I play it? Tonic, subdominant, mediant. This is a seventh. Great, how do I play it?”

Sienna Guillory (1975) British actress

THIS CULTURAL LIFE: SIENNA GUILLORY Article http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4159/is_20040523/ai_n12754898. The Independent on Sunday. May 23, 2004.

Music, Time

“Roger: The new Metallica. The new Metallica record is pretty rockin’ I’ve been listening to that. I’ve been listening to the Josie and the Pussycats Soundtrack on repeat since about 2003. Les Paul the guitar player, Les Paul and Mary Ford – check that out, it’s good stuff. I’m like really picky. I don’t like very many new bands. I feel like I’m in trouble, not naming the hottest five bands out right now. Actually I heard a pretty good Hillary Duff song the other day, I was impressed. It was catchy. It was good pop.”

Roger Manganelli (1973) American musician

Feeling

“Well, there was a guy, a blacksmith, in Abbott, and he and my granddad both had blacksmith's jobs. I hung around there a lot. And he had a family band. He just let me play because he knew I wanted to work and needed the work. So, I played a guitar in a big polka band with a lot of horns and everything. So, fortunately, no one ever heard me, because I wasn't that great. But I was nine or 10 years old and making eight to 10 dollars a night. So, it was easier than picking cotton.”

Willie Nelson (1933) American country music singer-songwriter.

Willie Nelson: Road Rules And Deep Thoughts, NPR Staff, NPR.org, National Public Radio, November 18, 2012, November 18, 2012 http://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=165223056,

Family, Guy, Night

“The first song I ever wrote back then was the song that landed me the job as composer at Westwood Studios, which was remarkable for me at the time. It was basically an acoustic guitar song with electric guitar leads and keyboard strings, and raining sound effects in the background. If I had to compare it to anything, it was probably similar to an interlude Queensryche song. I never released this song before, but I've recently been thinking about re-recording it with the experience I have now and really making it sound proper. Maybe one day.”

Frank Klepacki (1974) American musician, video game music composer and sound director

Gameplay magazine

Thinking, Time

“(in Old Town Albuquerque) This is where I grew up, I used to go to church here, and come here and perform. Wow, look at this! This is -- this is where i used to play. I should have brought my guitar, it brings back memories.”

Al Hurricane (1936–2017) American singer-songwriter

"Local Legends" on the CBS Early Show (December 26, 2011)

Memory

“Being a mom is my number one job. My son [Nayib, 27] lives in Los Angeles and he has his own company where he works on music and film projects, but he calls me every day. Emily [who is 12] is very athletic; she plays tennis and basketball. I love going to her games. If she needs help with her home work, I'll sit with her. She also is very musical -- she writes poetry and plays the guitar. I always tell both my kids, "Find what makes you happy. The money will come regardless of what you do, and more or less of it is not going to be what makes you happy. Spending hours at something you enjoy will."”

Gloria Estefan (1957) Cuban-American singer-songwriter, actress and divorciada

Latina Magazine (September, 2007)
2007, 2008

Love, Money, Happiness, Music

“I've written every drum bit I ever done, every note. I played the drums. I played the guitar. I played the piano. I wanted it exactly the way I wanted. Exactly. Any composer I would think would want it that way, and I don't deviate at all. Don't you think that somebody like Stravinsky, for instance, don't you think that it would have annoyed him if someone bent a note the wrong way?”

Captain Beefheart (1941–2010) musician

On Trout Mask Replica
The Artist Formerly Known as Captain Beefheart (1997)

Way, Thinking

“She followed him around where he played his guitar
Till he got so popular they made him a star
Then she could only see him on a TV screen
And hoped someday that he'd come back to New Orleans
Everybody liked her and was knocking on wood
But soon there came a baby for Lady B. Goode”

Chuck Berry (1926–2017) American rock-and-roll musician

"Lady B. Goode" (2017)
Song lyrics

Hope, Star, Baby

“[on Phil Anselmo] I think that he's probably one of the more enigmatic frontman of our time. He's tremendously inspirational to vocalists throughout the genre including myself. I know that there's some weirdness regarding the "incident," but I certainly know that Phil would have never in his darkest thoughts ever have wanted any harm to befall Dime. You know the world is a very, very extreme place. When a fan gets so connected to a band that the demise of the band, however they want to interpret it, leads them to question their own lives and their existence… I mean it's weird. There are too many types of music that inspire that passion in people and thankfully metal is one of them. It's just unfortunate that this animal happened to take the demise of Pantera so seriously that he felt that it was justification for him to do what he did. He took the life of probably one of the greatest guitar players to walk the face of the Earth.”

David Draiman (1973) American singer and songwriter

David Draiman talks disturbing thoughts http://www.concertlivewire.com/interviews/disturbed.htm, concertlivewire.com, 19 February 2005)

Life, People, World, Music

“And I don't give a damn about a greenback dollar
Spend it fast as I can for a wailin' song and a good guitar
The only things that I understand, oh yeah.”

Hoyt Axton (1938–1999) American country singer

Greenback Dollar (1963)

Understanding

“The only vestige of these musical vagrants now remaining, is to be found in the blind fiddlers wandering about the country, and the ballad singers, who frequently accompany their ditties with instrumental music, especially the fiddle, vulgarly called a crowd, and the guitar. And here we may observe, that the name of fiddlers was applied to the minstrels as early at least as the fourteenth century: it occurs in the Vision of Pierce the Ploughman, where we read, "not to fare as a fydeler, or a frier, to seke feastes."”

Joseph Strutt (1749–1802) British engraver, artist, antiquary and writer

pg. 186
The Sports and Pastimes of the People of England (1801), Minstrels

Music, Reading, Country

“Joni uses a lot of alternate tunings; that is, instead of tuning the guitar in the customary way, she tunes the strings to pitches of her own choosing. …Joni will talk compellingly and passionately about alternate tunings for hours, comparing them to different colors that van Gogh used in his paintings.”

Daniel Levitin (1957) American psychologist

This is Your Brain on Music (2006)

Color, Way, Passion, Painting

“You have to blow off your family. You have to blow off comfort. You have to blow off money…. You have to blow off your ego. You have to blow off everything except your guitar.”

Townes Van Zandt (1944–1997) singer-songwriter

Rolling Stone #1079 (28 May 2009), p. 64.

Money, Family

“She was married for seven years
to a concrete castle king.
She said she wanted to learn to play the guitar
and to hear her children sing.
So I'd show up about once a week
in my faded tight-legged jeans
with a backlog full of hobo stories
and dilapidated dreams.”

Harry Chapin (1942–1981) American musician

I Wanna Learn a Love Song
Song lyrics, Verities & Balderdash (1974)

Children, Dreams, Learning, Singing

“A lot of women play guitar very respectfully, and they play with the guitar; they don't play it—they play with it.”

Nancy Wilson (1954) American rock musician, member of Heart

On female guitarists, Rock and Roll Hall of Fame interview https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8EKTGlQp-c, 2016

Women

“When I asked Sergio Mendes why he still called his group Brasil '66 in 1967, he said "'66 was a very good year!" That's his group and the French song from The Umbrellas of Cherbourg. It's not one of their better tracks. Some of the things they've done I have enjoyed tremendously, though it's getting to the point where he's had commercial success doing what he's doing, so it's now somewhere in between strong Brazilian music and quasi-rock. Joao Palma is an excellent drummer. Here they have John Pisano of the Tijuana Brass playing an amplified guitar. He is one of the few people who, on the regular amplified guitar, has really got the Brazilian thing down. He can play in the Baden Powell style, which is so compelling and so dynamic. Sergio is usually a much more melodic pianist, but here he's trying to give a hardness and vitality to the over-all commercial sound, and he comes out lacking what he usually has—his lines are usually very smoothly melodic. This has nothing to do with jazz, but I find it pleasant; on the other hand, some of the things they do, like O Pato [from Mendes' previous album], or some of the faster things, I enjoy much more. Two stars.”

Clare Fischer (1928–2012) American keyboardist, composer, arranger, and bandleader

Reviewing Mendes' recording of Michel Legrand's '"Watch What Happens," from the album Equinox; as quoted in "Clare Fischer: Blindfold Test" http://www.mediafire.com/view/fix6ane8h54gx/Clare_Fischer#2nmgk677qzm4cnu

People, Music, Star, Strong

“He was a revealing symbol. He called himself passive-aggressive. There was self-pity, whining. There was a diminishment, a diminution. He was sitting there in his sweater, hunched over his guitar, looking like a little lost boy. Compare that with the great figures of my generation: Jimi Hendrix. Pete Townshend. Keith Richards.”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

On Kurt Cobain
Playboy interview (May 1995)

Boy

“I'd play whenever I could get my hands on an electric guitar; I was trying to pick up rock'n'roll riffs and electric blues-the latest Muddy Waters. I'd spend hours and hours on the same track, back again, and back again.”

Keith Richards (1943) British rock musician, member of The Rolling Stones

[Denyer, Ralph, The Guitar Handbook, 2002, 66, 0-679-74275-1]

Water

“My guitar is like my best friend. My guitar can get me through anything. If I can sit down and write an amazing song with my guitar about what's going on in life, then that's the greatest therapy for me.”

Miley Cyrus (1992) American actor and singer-songwriter

Mirror.co.uk http://www.mirror.co.uk/celebs/2008/05/05/miley-cyrus-i-like-to-be-the-girl-no-guy-can-get-89520-20406057/ (May 5, 2008)

Life

“I was too independent for Mick. I wasn't proper enough for him. He's a chauvinist. I wouldn't put up with that. Keith, surprisingly, is not. Though I feel sorry for Patti [Hansen]. I love her and think she is a marvellous woman, but I would not want to be in her shoes now. It's such a lonely existence, living with a rock 'n' roller. No matter how much he loves you, he will always love his music more. I know when Keith is working on his music nothing else matters to him. He can be in a room with fifty people and he won't nothing anything but his guitar. A woman, to live with a rock star, must find her ways of independence.”

Anita Pallenberg (1942–2017) German actress, model and Rolling Stones groupie

As quoted in a Vanity Fair magazine article, September 1989.

Love, People, Music, Shoe

“…Is the greatest guitar player in the world.”

Joe Satriani (1956) American guitar player

Steve Vai about Satriani, as quoted in Joe Satriani : The Satch Tapes (1993).

World

“[While her father was a political prisoner in Cuba] I was always singing and dancing and reciting poems -- that was how I used to do my crying over my father. There were a lot of negotiations between the US and Cuban governments over the next couple of years [1961 - 1963]. [Castro proposed an exchange of prisoners for food, medicine and building machinery], and eventually my dad was released. It was wonderful to have him home -- it was probably the happiest time in my life. For once, the whole family was together, living a normal life. That was when my sister, Becky, was born [1964], and it was also when I started guitar lessons. I would lock myself away in my room for days, learning how to play. Even then I was beginning to work out that music was a way to cut throught all the BS.”

Gloria Estefan (1957) Cuban-American singer-songwriter, actress and divorciada

he [London] Sunday Times (November 17, 2006)
2007, 2008

Life, Family, Food, Music

“At certain times I read a lot of poetry. My favorite poets are Shelley and Keats. Rimbaud is so identifiable. Lord Byron. I don't know. Lately if I read poems, it's like I can always hear the guitar. Even with Shakespeare's sonnets I can hear a melody because it's all broken up into timed phrases so I hear it. I always keep thinking, 'What kind of song would this be?”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

Interview with Denise Worrell, "'It's All Right in Front': Dylan on Life and Rock" in Time Magazine (25 November 1985)

Thinking, Time, Reading

“I like the sun, Alice
and doves, a good cigar,
a spanish guitar, jumping walls
and opening windows
and when a woman cries.
I like wine as much as flowers
and rabbits but not tractors,
homemade bread and Dolores' voice
and the sea wetting my feet.
I like to always be lying on the sand
or chasing Manuela on a bicycle
or all the time to see the stars
with Maria in the hayfield.
I'm not from here, I'm not from there,
I have no age, nor future,
and being happy is my color of identity.”

Facundo Cabral (1937–2011) Argentine singer and songwriter

Me gusta el sol, Alicia
y las palomas, el buen cigarro
y la guitarra española,
saltar paredes y abrir las ventanas
y cuando llora una mujer.
Me gusta el vino tanto como las flores
y los conejos pero no los tractores,
el pan casero y la voz de Dolores
y el mar mojándome los pies,
no soy de aqui ni soy de allá
no tengo edad mi porvenir y ser felíz
es mi color de identidad.
No soy de aqui ni soy de allá (1970

Happiness, Age, Color, Star

“I saw a review of our new album, and it said, "Every single component of the White Stripes is a gigantic lie." What does that mean? Have I sat down and said I was born in Mississippi? No. Did I say I grew up on a plantation and learned how to play guitar from a blind man? I never said anything like that. It's funny that people think me and Meg sit up late at night, in front of a gas lamp, and come up with these intricate lies to trick people.”

Jack White (1975) American musician and record producer

From the article White on White from Rolling Stone Magazine
On 'gimmicks

People, Lie, Thinking, Learning

“…primarily when I write, I use guitars and organic instruments because that's easier to write to but at the end of the day, the electronic side of things, that's my true passion.”

Klayton (1970) American musician

"Klayton Scott - Celldweller," (2003)

Passion

“And so I'd dream a bass will join me,
and fill the bottom in. And maybe now some lead guitar
so it would not sound so thin.
I need some drums to set the beat
and help me keep in time.
And way back in the distance,
some strings would sound so fine.”

Harry Chapin (1942–1981) American musician

Six String Orchestra
Song lyrics, Verities & Balderdash (1974)

Dreams, Way, Time, Help

“If I see a chick playing guitar, I’m drawn to that band immediately.”

Courtney Love (1964) American punk singer-songwriter, musician, actress, and artist

On women playing guitar, Pitchfork (1 May 2014)
2014–2017
Context: If I see a chick playing guitar, I’m drawn to that band immediately. I want to know everything, even if it’s completely electronic. But you have to really get my attention if you’re male. I can’t help it. It’s part of my nature.

“I write from instinct, from inexplicable sparkle. I don't know why I'm writing what I'm writing. Usually, I sit and I let my hands wander on my guitar. And I sing anything. I play anything. And I wait till I come across a pleasing accident. Then I start to develop it.”

Paul Simon (1941) American musician, songwriter and producer

Interview with Tony Schwartz in Playboy (February 1984) p. 166
Context: I write from instinct, from inexplicable sparkle. I don't know why I'm writing what I'm writing. Usually, I sit and I let my hands wander on my guitar. And I sing anything. I play anything. And I wait till I come across a pleasing accident. Then I start to develop it. Once you take a piece of musical information, there are certain implications that it automatically contains — the implication of that phrase elongated, contracted, or inverted or in another time signature. So you start with an impulse and go to what your ear likes.

Singing, Waiting

“I can embarrass myself very easily on guitar. It's funny because people say to me I can play anything; I'm God on the guitar. But I could make a big list of everything I can't play... I'm grateful that people don't notice that.”

Joe Satriani (1956) American guitar player

As quoted in BAM Magazine (6 April 1990).

“And that's life, then: things as they are,
This buzzing of the blue guitar.”

Wallace Stevens (1879–1955) American poet

The Man With the Blue Guitar (1937)
Context: So that's life, then: things are they are?
It picks its way on the blue guitar.
A million people on one string?
And all their manner in the thing,
And all their manner, right and wrong,
And all their manner, weak and strong?
And that's life, then: things as they are,
This buzzing of the blue guitar.

Life

“He was young and black and beautiful
big eyed, perfect skin an'
he played my guitar like a lightning storm”

Mike Scott (1958) songwriter, musician

"The Return of Jimi Hendrix"
Dream Harder (1993)
Context: He was young and black and beautiful
big eyed, perfect skin an'
he played my guitar like a lightning storm
like twirlin' feathers in the wind
he could make it sound like the end of the world
a fire, the flick of a knife
he could squeeze it slow and masterful
like the hand that brought the world to life

Beauty, Perfection

“Ziggy played guitar.”

David Bowie (1947–2016) British musician, actor, record producer and arranger

Ziggy Stardust
Song lyrics, The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars (1972)

“Freddie Aguilar, who's billed as "the Bob Dylan of the Philippines." This is unfair, since he's good-looking, plays the guitar well, can carry a tune, and writes songs that make sense.”

P. J. O'Rourke book Republican Party Reptile

Republican Party Reptile (1987)

Sense

“With a guitar I would be able to express the things I felt in sounds.”

W. C. Handy (1873–1958) American blues composer and musician

“If you can strum the guitar a little, hit the drums — it’s always fun and a good way to release tensions…You can have a hard day at work, pick up your instrument and just feel better. You also can appreciate why a performer is up on stage and see how they have spent their life learning their craft.”

Pete Escovedo (1935) Mexican-American jazz musician and percussionist

On the benefits of being a musician in “Drummer Pete Escovedo will stick with what he knows at Thornton Winery” https://www.pe.com/2017/07/06/drummer-pete-escovedo-will-stick-with-what-he-knows-at-thornton-winery/ in The Press-Enterprise (2017 Jul 6)

Life, Way, Feeling, Learning

“I’ve always said that Chris was the greatest songwriter to ever come out of Seattle. Jimi Hendrix could play the guitar like crazy, but Chris had the song-writing chops that we all sort of hoped to get to at different points in our songwriting careers. He had a way he could wrap a melody around odd time signatures and weird parts and make them catchy. He was a beautiful wordsmith. If you look at his lyrics, he obviously was processing his pain and depression, and all of those things. I think that’s part of what people, myself included, responded to when he was singing. With the songwriting he had that voice, there’s not too many people that have that many options with their voice. He could do a lot of different things with it, and have a lot of different characters in that voice. I feel so lucky that I got to be in a project with him, got to hang out with him, and just sort of witness his greatness.”

Chris Cornell (1964–2017) American singer-songwriter, musician

Jeff Ament talking about Cornell on NBA.com podcast NBA Soundsystem ** Pearl Jam's Jeff Ament on Chris Cornell's death and depression, 30 May 2017 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9buvTFxf2EA,

Pain, People, Making love, Beauty

“That’s one of those songs that kind of happened in one moment. I just picked up a guitar and started playing it, and those lines just came out. I had a dream when I was in Seattle with my wife. I woke up from this dream, and as I woke up it was like I was sort of flying away above us. I remember feeling like our whole life is wrapped up in moments, but we have to be really aware because it’s so short. That was kind of what the song was about to me. We have to be really aware of every moment together. All we really know is that we have this life. Who knows what else is gonna happen? Let’s not let it suddenly be over and we didn’t appreciate it from day to day, from hour to hour, ’cause life’s gonna fly by.”

Chris Cornell (1964–2017) American singer-songwriter, musician

On the song "Before We Disappear" from his 2015 solo album Higher Truth ** Chris Cornell Flashback Q&A: 'We Have to Be Aware That Life Is So Short', Yahoo!, May 19, 2017 https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/chris-cornell-flashback-qa-aware-life-short-023857577.html, On songwriting

Life, Dreams, Feeling, Flying

“I’m completely self-taught on guitar- limited me in some ways but very helpful in others. My only goal to playing was to write songs.”

Chris Cornell (1964–2017) American singer-songwriter, musician

Chris Cornell: The American Songwriter Twitterview, American Songwriter, November 1, 2011 https://americansongwriter.com/2011/11/chris-cornell-the-american-songwriter-twitterview/, Soundgarden Era

Way, Help, Self-confidence

“I was always into different kinds of music but just by default, I was singing and playing acoustic guitar; I didn’t know how to dance or anything. So it would take some time, over a year, for me to kind of progress into the stuff that I ended up doing later, the more Southern soul, country-rock, whatever-you-want-to-call-it kind of thing.”

Lucinda Williams (1953) American rock, folk, blues, and country music singer, songwriter and musician

On her 1980 album Happy Woman Blues in “Lucinda Williams Looks Back on Every Album She’s Ever Made” https://www.spin.com/2016/02/lucinda-williams-ghosts-of-highway-20-car-wheels-on-a-gravel-road-interview/ in Spin (2016 Feb 25)

Music, Soul, Singing, Time

“Satin grew up in a small town in Minnesota and felt an instinctive sort of rebellion, but unlike Bob Dylan, he did not play the guitar and so had no way of expressing it.”

Mark Satin (1946) American political theorist, author, and newsletter publisher

Wakefield, Dan (March 1968). "Supernation at Peace and War." The Atlantic Monthly, vol. 221, no. 3, p. 42.
Overall

Way

“Temporal was the first recording that captured my true guitar sound (dinosaurs slipping and blocks of wire whittled with a feather).”

Shawn Lane (1963–2003) American musician

The mood of the world was different and yet music (sculpted time) always is there waiting to be manifested.
http://bardorecords.com/Bardo136.htm Press site for the album Temporal Analogues of Paradise (1995)

“I regret not having taken more advantage of time — of the solidity of time, the intention of time. That’s why I don’t like to sleep much anymore. Had I known when I was 20 that I was going to be a musician, I would have taken to the piano, I would have taken the guitar more seriously, I would have perfected my knowledge of music.”

Julio Iglesias (1943) Spanish recording artist; singer-songwriter

On one of his biggest regrets in "Julio Iglesias reflects on a life that 'has been a miracle'" https://apnews.com/7ef030336a5b4a1a949723346d64ec51 in AP News (2019 Jun 14)

Music, Knowledge, Sleep, Time

“When I get to heaven, I'm gonna shake God's hand
Thank him for more blessings than one man can stand
Then I'm gonna get a guitar and start a rock-n-roll band
Check into a swell hotel, ain't the afterlife grand?”

John Prine (1946–2020) American country singer/songwriter

"When I Get to Heaven" · Live performance on Austin City Limits https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JKPDFQRmG_M · Lyric video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l0EiV423j0M Song lyrics, The Tree of Forgiveness (2018)

God

“You can't rap, my friend
You're white and you're from Fulham
Please put down the mic
there's no way you can fool them
Don't be stupid, you won't get that far
Turn your back on hip-hop, bruv, and go and play guitar”

Example (musician) (1982) English rapper and singer

"You Can't Rap" (song) ("You Can't rap" - Official video on YouTube) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cvCd1Xq0Au4 (+ Lyrics version of "You Can't Rap" on YouTube) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bK_3L-9dv_c Studio albums, What We Made (2007)

Stupidity, Fools, Way

“Now roll them cases out and lift them amps,
Haul them trusses down and get 'em up them ramps.
Cause when it comes to moving me,
You know you guys are the champs.
But when that last guitar's been packed away,
You know that I still want to play.
So just make sure you got it all set to go
Before you come for my piano.”

Jackson Browne (1948) American singer-songwriter

Source: Running on Empty (1977), "The Load-Out"

Guy

“I've been down this road before
I remember every tree
Every single blade of grass
Holds a special place for me
And I remember every town
And every hotel room
Every song I ever sang
On a guitar out of tune”

John Prine (1946–2020) American country singer/songwriter

Song lyrics, I Remember Everything (2020)

Tree, Grass

Quotes about guitar page 2

Quotes about guitar
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