“When the power of love overcomes the love of power the world will know peace.” - Jimi Hendrix

“Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and life to everything.” - Plato

“There are more love songs than anything else. If songs could make you do something we’d all love one another.” - Frank Zappa

“Music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosphy. Music is the electrical soil in which the spirit lives, thinks and invents.” - Ludwig van Beethoven

“Wes Montgomery played impossible things on the guitar because it was never pointed out to him that they were impossible.” - Ronnie Scott

“The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There’s also a negative side.” - Hunter S. Thompson

“I’ve always felt that blues, rock ‘n’ roll and country are just about a beat apart.” - Waylon Jennings (1937-2002)

“Guitarists shouldn’t get too riled up about all of the great players that were left off of ‘Rolling Stone Magazines’ list of the Greatest Guitar Players of all Time’... Rolling Stone is published for people who read the magazine because they don’t know what to wear.” - Joe (Sach) Satriani

”I don’t want you to play me a riff that’s going to impress Joe Satriani; give me a riff that makes a kid want to go out and buy a guitar and learn to play.” - Ozzy Osbourne

 “We don’t like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out.” -Decca Recording Company rejecting the Beatles, 1962

“I wanted to create music that was so different that my mother could tell me from anyone else” - Les Paul / Legendary Guitarist and creator of the Les Paul Guitar

“It’s much too late to do anything about rock & roll now ...” - Jerry Garcia / Grateful Dead
When asked about his theory of relativity Albert Einstein said, “It occurred to me by intuition, and music was the driving force behind that intuition. My discovery was the result of musical perception.”

“Music is your own experience, your own thoughts, your wisdom. If you don’t live it, it won’t come out of your horn. They teach you there’s a boundary line to music. But, man, there’s no boundary line to art.” - Charlie “YardBird” Parker

“I think people overemphasize the importance of gear in their search for tone. Your sound comes from how you pick and dampen the strings, and from your attack as much as anything.” - Eric Johnson

“Use the talents you possess, for the woods would be very silent if no birds sang except the best.” - Henry Van Dyke

“Albert King wasn’t my brother in blood, but he sure was my brother in Blues” - B.B. King

“Just as Jesus created wine from water, we humans are capable on transmuting emotion into music.” Carlos Santana

“Of the whole bunch of guys who play hollow body guitar, I think Herb Ellis has the most drive” - Les Paul

“Lightnin’ Hopkins taught us, ‘the rubber on a wheel is faster than the rubber on a heel’ and Muddy Waters taught us ‘you don’t have to be the best one; just be a good ‘un’ ... that just about says it all, always strive to be a good ‘un.” - Billy F. Gibbons - Z.Z. Top

“I don’t know anything about music, in my line of work you don’t have to.” - Elvis Presley (1935-1977)

“Playing scales is like a boxer skipping rope or punching a bag. It’s not the thing in itself; it’s preparatory to the activity” - Barney Kessel

“When I saw Jimi Hendrix, I knew immediately that this guy was the real thing... and when he played it was like a rough sketch of what he was going to become... this guy was our generation, and he wasn’t in a suit... he played a Howlin’ Wolf song ‘Killing Floor’, and then we (The Cream) had to carry on the set. It was pretty hard to follow.” - Eric Clapton / Yardbirds / Blues Breakers /Cream / Blind Faith / Derek and the Dominoes

“Most of us go to our graves with our music still inside of us.” - unknown

“Whenever society gets too stifling and the rules get too complex, there’s some sort of musical explosion.” - Slash / Guns ‘n Roses

“Anything that is too stupid to be spoken is sung.” - Voltaire (1694-1778)

“Regardless of what you play, the biggest thing is keeping the feel going.” - Wes Montgomery

“It’s hard to describe, because on one hand you want your solo to be spontaneous. On the other hand, I feel a good guitar solo should be somewhat of a composition in itself. So, you sort of toggle back and forth between the concept of trying to initiate flow and composing. I think it’s a combination of both.” - Jeff ‘Skunk’ Baxter / Steely Dan / Doobie Brothers

“I started playing jazz by slowing down Tal Farlow records and analyzing his runs.” - Lenny Breau

”A good player can make any guitar sound good.” - Mike Bloomfield / Paul Butterfield Blues Band / Electric Flag

“The biggest difference between me and other guitar players is that I don’t use effects to color my guitar parts, I create guitar parts using effects... they’re a crucial part of what I do... I don’t consider effects a crutch... they’re part of the art.” - The Edge / U2

“Music is an immediate art... it’s always happening right now.” - Sam Andrew / Big Brother & The Holding Company /The Kozmic Blues Band /Moby Grape

“Little Wing is like one of these beautiful girls that come around sometimes... you play your gig; it’s the same thing as the olden days, and these beautiful girls come around... you do actually fall in love with them because that’s the only love you can have. It’s not always the physical thing of ‘Oh, there’s one over there...’, it’s not one of those scenes. They actually tell you something. They release different things inside themselves. Little Wing was a very sweet girl that came around that gave me her whole life and more if I wanted it.” - Jimi Hendrix

“Bach gave us God’s Word. Mozart gave us God’s laughter. Beethoven gave us God’s fire. God gave us Music that we might pray without words.” - Anon

“When you strum a guitar you have everything - rhythm, bass, lead and melody” - David Gilmore / Pink Floyd

“Andres Segovia literally created the genre of classical guitar, which hadn’t existed before around 1910. There was flamenco, which he borrowed from, but he actually arranged the works of Mozart and other classical composers for guitar, something that had never been done before. Segovias’ style is not slick or contrived, but it’s still very clean and his timing is impeccable... it’s got a feeling of casual elegance, as if he’s sitting around the house in Spain with a jug of wine, just playing from the heart.” - Roger McGuinn / Byrds

“You can’t over-hype Sam Phillips. Think of Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Cash, Roy Orbison, Carl Perkins, Howlin’ Wolf, B.B. King: if you were associated with just one of those names, you’d be immortal.” - Andy McLenon

“Go and Say Goodbye” by the Buffalo Springfield stands as one of the first examples of what would later be branded country rock” - Chris Hillman / Byrds / Manassas / Desert Rose Band

“The whole problem can be stated quite simply by asking, “Is there a meaning to music?” My answer would be, “Yes.” And “Can you state in so many words what the meaning is?” My answer to that would be, “No.”” - Aaron Copland

“Guitarists should be able to pick up the guitar and play music on it for an hour, without a rhythm section or anything.” - Joe Pass

“Music is an outburst of the soul.” - Frederick Deluis

“Everyone was using tiny brushes and doing watercolors, while Jimi Hendrix was painting galactic scenes in Cinemascope. We are working in a field of mystical resonance, sound and vibration... that’s what makes people cry, laugh and feel their hair stand up.” - Carlos Santana

“The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There’s also a negative side.” - Hunter S. Thompson

“There’s nothing remarkable about it. All one has to do is hit the right keys at the right time and the instrument plays itself.” - Johann Sebastian Bach

“Whenever you study composition you inevitably encounter Bach right off the bat. You can’t get across the room without running into him and the other greats. Analyzing Bach absolutely influenced my jazz playing.” - Howard Roberts

“Elvis Presleys’ first album had more energy and more enthusiam than any other album at the time. When it was released it just blew everything else out. It changed the whole landscape of music.” - Brian Setzer / Stray Cats / Brian Setzer Orchestra

“Kenny Burrell, that’s the sound I’m looking for.” - Jimi Hendrix

“I’ve always wanted the sound of Muddy Waters’ early records - only louder “ - Eric Clapton

“I thought Eric Clapton was good. He still is. Not only is he good - he’s rock’s #1 guitarist, and he plays blues better than most of us” - B.B. King

“I never tried to prove nothing, just wanted to give a good show. My life has always been my music, it’s always come first, but the music ain’t worth nothing if you can’t lay it on the public. The main thing is to live for that audience, ‘cause what you’re there for is to please the people.” -- Louis “Satchmo” Armstrong

“It took me five years of going right into the mouth of the lion to learn to be at ease onstage. If you deal with an audience as a bunch of people having a great time, you’ll have a much better time as a performer” - Rory Block

“I get more of a dreamy thing from the audience - it’s more of a thing that you go up into. You get into such a pitch sometimes that you go up into another thing. You don’t forget about the audience, but you forget about all the paranoia, that thing where you’re saying, ‘Oh gosh, I’m on stage - what am I going to do now?’ - Then you go into this other thing, and it turns out to be like almost like a play in certain ways.” - Jimi Hendrix

“My discussion with Keith Richards about the creative process led me to believe that there’s an invisible presence of a stream of ever-flowing creativity that we overhear - all you have to do is pull up the antenna and dial it in. This presence allows you to maintain your sense of origin and move forward” - Billy F. Gibbons / ZZ-Top

“I have my own particular sorrows, loves, delights - and you have yours. But sorrow, gladness, yearning, hope, love, belong to all of us, in all times and in all places. Music is the only means whereby we feel these emotions in their universality.” - H. A. Overstreet

“When Lonnie Mack came out with the guitar instrumental “Memphis” I thought, Oh God, finally somebody we guitar players can relate to !” - Dicky Betts / Allman Bros. Band / Great Southern

 “Without music, life would be a mistake.” - Friedrich Nietzsche

“We’re all about trying to play better every night, not just singing hit songs. We ad lib, and every night there’s jamming - it’s almost like the Grateful Dead meets Buck Owens some nights, because we’ll go off on little adventures and sometimes we do crash the bus!” - Brad Paisley

“It’s the opportunity to play something completely different, responding to what happened just before you started to play, and I love that.” - Larry Carlton

“Jeff Beck is my idol. Sometimes he finds notes that I just do not have on my guitar. Frank Zappa’s another one. I loved Frank Zappa. I do think Van Halen reinvented the guitar, he’s an excellent musician, a shrewd guitarist and as a person he’s wonderful.” - Ritchie Blackmore / Deep Purple / Rainbow

“Your talking to someone who really understands rock music.” - Tipper Gore

“I think I got the idea of tapping watching Jimmy Page do his “Heartbreaker” solo back in 1971. He was doing a pull-off to an open string, and I thought wait a minute, open string... pull off. I can do that, but what if I use my finger as the nut and move it around? I just kind of took it and ran with it - Eddie Van Halen

“The guitar is just a wonderful instrument. It’s everything: a bartender, a psychiatrist, a housewife. It’s everything, but it’s elusive” - Les Paul

 “The appearance of Mr. Segovia is not that of the trumpeted virtuoso. He is rather the dreamer or scholar in bearing, long hair, eyeglasses, a black frock coat and neckwear of an earlier generation. He seats himself, thoughtfully, places his left foot on its rest, strikes a soft chord, then bends over his guitar and proceeds to play like the poet and master he is of the instrument.” - New York Times, January, 9, 1928

“Life is like music; it must be composed by ear, feeling, and instinct, not by rule.” - Samuel Butler

“I liken feedback to the effect of when you go surfing; you can get pummeled by a wave, but if you balance the forces right, you can have a dandy ride. That’s pretty much what feedback is.” - Jorma Kaukonen / Jefferson Airplane / Hot Tuna

“I don’t use all my fingers, I can play chords that way but to me it sounds sloppy, I don’t like the sound that I get. Joe Pass does it very well, but he uses more of a classical technique. Sometimes I use a finger and the pick for pairs of notes, together or alternately. Lenny Breau plays a harmonic under the chord, he showed me how to do it but I don’t do it too well. By making the harmonic on the fourth or fifth string, the bottom voice moves up an octave in between the other notes, where it wouldn’t be possible to finger them. He gets a very good close harmony sound that way. He uses a thumb pick all the time, so that makes it easier for him and he plays fast with it.” - Tal Farlow

“I also became inspired by impressionist painters such as Renoir, and wanted to do the same sort of thing with music-portray whatever mood strikes me the way Keith Jarrett does on piano.” - Lenny Breau

“He signed his work. You could always tell when it was Herb Ellis playing” - Barney Kessel

“In oddball places, the electric guitar has been taken as an almost alien object. This weird, six-stringed instrument that fell down to earth and was then played loud but with traditional grace and intelligence.” - Ry Cooder

“Each guitar has its own character and personality, which can be magnified once the player engages in beatin’ it up.” - Billy F. Gibbons

“I figured out how to get the guitar to rumble...I put it on the middle pickup, turn the tone know down, grab it by the wang bar, and just shake it on the floor. A Stratocaster is pretty tough - I wouldn’t recommend that anybody do that with their ES-335” - Stevie Ray Vaughn

“The Strat covers the complete spectrum of human emotion. The tremolo enables you to do anything - you can hit any note known to mankind” - Jeff Beck

“A Strat was a thing of wonder. When I was 14 or 15, the Shadows were a big influence, and they had the first Strats that came to England. I like to play all kinds of guitars, but I wasn’t getting the sound I really wanted until I got a Stratocaster.” - Mark Knopfler / Dire Straits

“The only thing I ever really wanted was a Strat. I started playing guitar after seeing Jimi Hendrix on TV the day he died. Then I got Deep Purples’ Fireball album which was also a big influence. I have a collection of more than 200 of them that includes Strats from every year since March 1954 - the first month the Strat was made.” - Yngwie Malmsteen

“There would be no rock and roll or rhythm and blues without Leo Fenders’ contribution... the tone is everything.” - Bonie Raitt

“Sometimes it’s the mistakes that end up leading you into new territory. Like the guitar solo on ‘Peelin’ Taters.’ I had some speaker problems, but the tone ended up sounding better than if I had new speakers. It’s a 60’s Nashville, ‘uptown’ thing.” - Junior Brown

“That’s one of the cool things about going to local bars, seeing what people are doing and jamming with them. I’m a huge advocate of jamming with others - you learn a lot. So I love to go and do that - even if people wipe the stage up with you.” - Slash / Guns & Roses / Velvet Revolver

“I think of improvising as composing - for me it’s all about playing melodies. When I improvise, there’s not a lot of real thinking going on, per se - it’s more like riding a wave - and I know how to stand on the board.” - Robben Ford / Yellow Jackets / James Cotton Blues Band

“I’ve always stuck with the same basic kind of Gibson, like the model I play now, an ES-175. It’s the only kind of electric I’ve ever played when I had a choice. I’ve had this one since 1963. Back in my Synanon days, I didn’t have a guitar of my own; all I had was a solidbody rock and roll guitar that belonged to Synanon. I was playing a gig at a local club with it when this guy named Mike Peak came in and saw me playing jazz with a rock guitar. A few months later, on my birthday, I came home and there was this brand new ES-175 that he had bought for me. He was in the construction business and played a little guitar himself and just felt that I should have the proper kind of instrument. It’s the only electric I’ve used since then.” - Joe Pass

“My style is Driven by improvisation - not knowing what will come moment by moment. The other thing is, I like to play like a singer. I hate mindless tinkling guitar.” - Howard Roberts

“I would advise you to keep your overhead down; avoid a major drug habit; play everyday and take it in front of other people. They need to hear it and you need them to hear it.” - James Taylor

“The blues appealed to me, but so did rock. The early rockabilly guitarists like Cliff Gallup and Scotty Moore were just as important to me as the blues guitarists.” - Jimmy Page / Yardbirds / Led Zepplin

“You think back to Tele players, and James Burton was the one who started it all. He inspired Roy Nichols (guitar for Merle Haggard & the Strangers), Don Rich (guitar for Buck Owens & the Buckaroos), and guys like that to push the envelope and expand on that sound. I really identify with that kind of thinking. Those guys to me are the reason why any of us do this.” - Brad Paisley

“As far as being a ‘player’s player’, you’ve only got to go to Nashville or Argentina, and you can forget about it. The world is full of amazing guitar players, and you know it, and I know it. It’s a humbling experience.” - Mark Knopfler / Dire Straits

“I’d been talking about Duane Allman because I’d heard him play on Wilson Picketts’ recording of “Hey Jude” and kept asking people who he was. So Tom Doud took me and all the rest of the Dominoes to see the Allman Brothers play in Coconut Grove and introduced us. I said “let’s hang out - come back to the studio.” We just jammed and hung out. I kept him there, I kept thinking up ways to keep him in the room. “Key to the Highway”, “Nobody Knows You When You’re Down and Out” are first or second takes. Then I’d quickly think of something else to keep him there. I knew sooner or later he was going to go back to the Allmans, but I wanted to steal him! I tried, and he actually came on a few gigs, too. But then he had to say, almost like a woman, “Well, you know I am actually married to the Allman Brothers Band and I can’t stay with you” - I was really quite heartbroken! I’d got really used to him, and after that I felt like I had to have another guitar player. I had Neal Schon come in for a little while, having met him through Carlos Santana, but by that time, Derek and the Dominoes were on it’s way out.” - Eric Clapton

“There’s a fine line between genius and insanity. I have erased this line.” - Oscar Lavant / Pianist

“Hendrix was back there with a few of the others who were like my training wheels. Hearing him as a teenager taught me to look at the guitar in a different way - and how to tap into that thing inside of me that was already leaning toward improvisation. You learn other players’ licks at first; then you take off the training wheels and start using the licks as building blocks to make your own thing. That’s how influences work. somewhere in whatever I do, there’s a little bit of Hendrix - plus about a hundred others.” - Junior Brown

“Eventually you’ll take the phrases and rhythm patterns you’ve copped and begin to put your own mark on them.” - Eddie Van Halen

“Rock & Roll is the physical thing that just comes out of you. The other stuff you have to sit down and learn. Once you learn scales and chord progressions, you can make up your own versions.” - Brian Setzer

“While other guitars may have more twang or an esoteric atmosphere, the Les Paul is like a T-Rex thampling everything in it’s path. It can be subtle if you want it to be, but it works best if you have an ‘armadillo in your trousers’ and you want to articulate that.” - Miles Zuniga / Fastball

“When I take my Les Paul onstage, it’s reliable. An SG could be different from night to night, but a Les Paul is so solid and reliable that you can trust it every night.” - Peter Svensson / The Cardigans

“Rock & Roll is feeling, and after you know most of the basics: chords, rhythm, scales and bends - getting that feeling is just about the most important aspect of playing guitar.” - Eddie Van Halen

“We have quite a large musical area, and that makes it more fun for us. Certainly more satisfying, because it doesn’t restrict us to one particular idea or one particular style. The result, I think, is pretty interesting. We don’t expect to make a fortune at it or ever be popular or famous or worshipped or hit The Ed Sullivan Show or the circuses or the big top. As long as we can play, we’ll play, regardless of what it’s for, who it’s for or anything. It’s fun for us - that’s the important thing.” - Jerry Garcia / Grateful Dead

“There’s a basic rule which runs through all kinds of music, kind of an unwritten rule. I don’t know what it is. But I’ve got it.” - Ron Wood / Rolling Stones / Faces

“Country music is three chords and the truth.” - Harlan Howard

“I just don’t know what direction people want. I can’t turn on a radio without being disgusted completely. And now it’s just gotten to the point where I can’t listen to anything, it’s trashy. It’s just a hundred channels of garbage all over. And not just here, it’s in England as well. It’s almost just like a global effort to knock the sense out of you if you’re a musician (laughs). There’s not any little morsel for musicians to latch on to. It’s all glossy, lipstick, and bare midriffs. Unless you go to a blues club, or some outrageous, hip dive somewhere that nobody knows about until the night before, the pickings are slim for inspiration. I still listen to Django Reinhardt, his catalog. I’m just catching up with that after several years of not really listening to him proper. You know he’s the greatest. It’s the fear thing. But now I’m getting used to him. He was God. Just amazing.” - Jeff Beck / Yardbirds / Jeff Beck Group

“Usually, no one quite knew where Django Reinhardt was going to be, but I met his brother and about an hour later in walks Django with an entourage of friends. He always traveled with a large group. He carried his own admirers with him. The most sinister-looking bunch of hoodlums you’ve ever seen. I walked up and offered to buy him a drink. That seemed to be the right thing to do. He was the first really brilliant solo guitarist I ever became aware of, I had records of his when I was 10 years old. It just blew my mind that anyone could play a guitar like that. Still does.” - Charlie Byrd / Jazz Guitar

“Hearing Andres Segovia in person was quite a revelation! It was a knockout.” - Julian Bream

“You’ve got to be original, or there will be nothing distinctive or interesting about your playing.” - Liona Boyd

“I’d like to get something together - like a Handel, Bach, Muddy Waters, flamenco type of thing. If I could get that sound, I’d be happy” - Jimi Hendrix

“Charlie Christians’ contributions to the electric guitar are as big as Thomas Edisons’ contributions to the world.” - Barney Kessel

“When it came time to hire a guitar player, I didn’t even have to think about it - Mike Bloomfield was the best guitar player I’d ever heard.” - Bob Dylan

“Barney Kessel is definitely the best guitar player in this world, or any other world.” - George Harrison / Beatles

“Jimi Hendrix could play better than our best guys and he did it while he was dancing while being completely outrageous.” - David Crosby / Byrds / Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young

“Duane Allman was one of the best there ever was. When you listen to him, you are hearing a truly gifted individual giving his all to the music, and there is nothing better than that. Duane played music the same way that he rode his motorcycle and drove his car - he was a daredevil, just triple Scorpio, God’s-on-my-side wide open. That was part of the romance and I loved Duane. I have nothing but admiration for him.” - Dicky Betts / Allman Brothers Band / Great Southern

“Kenny Burrell is the grand master of jazz guitar.” - Dizzy Gillespie

“Music expresses that which cannot be said and on which it is impossible to be silent.” - Victor Hugo

“Most beginners want to learn lead (melody) because they think it’s cool, consequently, they never really develop good rhythm (harmony) skills. And since most of a rock guitarists time is spent playing rhythm, it’s important to learn to do it well. Learning lead should come after you can play solid backup and have the sound of the chords in your head.” - Eddie Van Halen

 “My policy is not how fast you play, it’s not how much you play - it’s what you play and where you play it. The word I still use today is called “simplicity,” it is so important that you use simplicity in your playing and in your music.” - James Burton / Elvis Presley / Ricky Nelson / EmmyLou Harris / John Denver

“I remember working with Brian Eno, and the idea was to keep this two-chord mantra going, keep it going, keep it going as long as we could stand it, and then bam - we made this chord change and it was dramatic. Songs like that fascinate me.” - The Edge

“After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.” - Aldous Huxley
“Everyone has their own sound, and if you’re heard enough, folks will come to recognize it. Style however, is a different thing. Try to express your own ideas. It’s much more difficult to do, but the rewards are there if you’re good enough to pull it off.” - Chet Atkins

“The effects of good music are not just because it’s new; on the contrary music strikes us more the more familiar we are with it.” - Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

“When I heard “Pride and Joy” by Stevie Ray Vaughn on the radio, I just said “Hallelujah.” He was just so good and strong and he would not be denied. He single handedly brought guitar and blues oriented music back to the marketplace.” - Dickey Betts

“When I was in Nashville, Tennessee in 1970 with Derek and the Dominoes, I went into this shop and they had a rack of Strats and Teles - all going for $100.00 each. I bought a handfull and made Blackie out of the body from one, the neck from another, and so on.” - Eric Clapton

“I wanted a Gibson type sound, but with a Strat vibrato, so, I bought a body from Charvel for $50.00 and a neck for $80.00 - slapped it together, put an old Gibson PAF in it and painted it up with the stripes.” - Eddie Van Halen

“There’s something about the Strat’s shape that is at once masculine and feminine” - Bonnie Raitt

“I got a standard box (Gibson L5-CES). I don’t never want nothing special. Then if I drop my box, I can borrow somebody else’s.” - Wes Montgomery

“Joao Gilberto on guitar could read a newspaper and sound good.” - Miles Davis

“My heart and soul are in the Stratocaster” - Adrian Belew / King Crimson / Frank Zappa

“I especially always like it when Jimi Hendrix would play the song and then he’d go on to, uh, Chainsaw Massacre Tazmanian Devil Aurora Borealis Galaxy. I like it when he’d start with the feedback. And I saw Stevie Ray do it one time too. I’m sure he did it many times but I only saw him do it one time were he where the guitar became like an Aurora Borealis and all this colors of sound were screaming out of it even though he wasn’t putting his fingers on it. That’s kinda like invoking ghosts or something and that’s my favorite part that I miss about Jimi is when he would open up certain channels and let certain demons and angels dance together, you know what I mean - that it was beyond B flat or C flat.” - Carlos Santana

“Secretly, I wanted to look like Jimi Hendrix, but I could never quite pull it off.” - Bryan Ferry / Roxy Music

“Lenny Breau dazzled me with his extraordinary guitar playing. I wish the world had the opportunity to experience his artistry.” -George Benson

“I too once belived in the heavier gauge string as a superior tone source. However, thanks to the graciousness of B.B. King I learned that a lighter-gauge string offers superior playing comfort... try it, you may like it.” - Billy F. Gibbons

“Protect your hands! Some fans demonstrate their enthusiam with bone-crushing hand shakes. My former teacher Julian Bream often bows Japanese style with his hands behind his back. Smart man!” - Liona Boyd

“Shortly before she died Janis Joplin gave me the Gibson Hummingbird she recorded “Me and Bobbby McGee” on. Janis was a good guitar player, for her purposes... she just wanted to play along with her songs, and she had a real pure and nice style for that.” - Sam Andrew / Big Brother & The Holding Company / The Kozmic Blues Band /Moby Grape

“Some musicians, man, you hear the note almost before they hit it. Jimi, Coltrane and Charlie Parker were like that.” Carlos Santana

“Albert Lee and I have become real close friends, and he comes out anytime I’m in the L.A. area, and he’ll sit in for the whole show! We’ve got a habit of doing that In Austin, Redd Volkaert does the same thing... it’s fun! I love to make it a guitar thing and the audience doesn’t know any different - they think he’s some new band member they don’t know. They don’t realize Albert’s the reason we all play Teles!” - Brad Paisley

“It’s a marvelous feeling when someone says “I want to do this song of yours” because they’ve connected to it. That’s what I’m after.” - Mary Chapin Carpenter

“There was mass hysteria in the Chess Recording Studio when I did the “Shapes of Things” solo. They weren’t expecting it, and it was just some weird mist coming from the East out of an amp.” - Jeff Beck

“If you hit a wrong note, then make it right by what you play afterwards.” - Joe Pass
“We could play two improvised lines at the same time and it would come out as if someone had stayed up all night and written it out. It’s uncanny -- the involvement, the harmonization, the counterpoint - the kind of stuff we would get into” - Herb Ellis on his musical relationship with the Joe Pass

“The Grand Ole Opry used to come on, and I used to watch that. They used to have some pretty heavy cats, heavy guitar players.” - Jimi Hendrix

“I think pure country music includes rock and roll. I’ve never been able to get into the further label of country-rock - how can you define something like that? I just say this: It’s music. Either it’s good or it’s bad; either you like it or you don’t.” - Gram Parsons

“I was the audience he wanted to reach. Gram Parsons’ writing brought his own personal generations poetry and vision into the very traditional format of country music, and he came up with something completely different.” - Emmylou Harris

“I did several shows with Jimi Hendrix, that’s when I got to know him better, I knew of him, I met him when he was playing with Little Richard. He was kind of quiet, shy, he didn’t open up too much, but there were questions as we all ask each other. You know, “how do you do this” and “why do you do that.” We had very small discussions on things like that. And he was very polite, I thought he was a very nice guy.” - B.B. King

“When I started to play with my fingernails, it was not just for volume. The most important thing was giving the guitar different colors (timbre) in its voices.” - Andres Segovia

“We kept moving forward and didn’t try to recreate the past. The approach to each album was radically different every time. Many bands would have some success, and, because they were locked into having a single - something we didn’t have to worry about - they had to make sure there was something similar on the next album. That was never the idea with Led Zeppelin. The goal was to keep that spark of spontaneity at all times.” - Jimmy Page

“Americans want grungy people, stabbing themselves in the head on stage. They get a bright bunch like us, with deodorant on, they don’t get it.” - Liam Gallagher

“I remember first seeing Barney Kessel, in the 1940s, standing on the corner of Hollywood and Vine, in his cowboy boots, sun glasses and hipster threads, holding his guitar case man, you just knew that cat could wail!” - Anita O’Day

“My audience has developed so that they come to listen and are quiet, Thus I can work in a limited volume range and explore all the subtleties that can happen, which is my favorite part of the music.” - Kenny Burrell

“Sam Phillips always encouraged me to do it my way, to use what ever other influences I wanted, but never to copy. That was a great rare gift he gave me: believe in myself, right from the start of my recording career. If there hadn’t been a Sam Phillips, I might still be working in a cotton field.” - Johnny Cash

“Johnny Cash has only passed into the greater light. He will only become more important in this industry as time goes by.” - Dolly Parton

“The world has lost a legend, and I have lost a friend. Johnny Cash was the rare soul who could be both.” - Emmylou Harris

“The music you make is shaped by what you play it on. If you feel that you’re not getting enough out of a song, change the instrument - go from an acoustic to an electric or vice versa, or try an open tuning. Do something to shake it up.” - Mark Knopfler

“All around it would have to be Eddie Cochran, because it wasn’t just music with him; it was his guitar playing, his look, his singing, I’d say that, all things considered, he’s probably my favorite “cat” of all time” - Brian Setzer

“I couldn’t believe how good Jimi Hendrix was. It was a really difficult thing for me to deal with, but I just had to surrender and say, ‘This is fantastic.” - Eric Clapton

“People ask me to describe how I play, and the most obvious answer is that I’m a jazz influenced guitar player. But I’m not a jazz guitar player. Wes Montgomery was a jazz guitarist, Joe Pass was a jazz guitarist (laughs).” - Larry Carlton

“Duane Allman was bursting with energy. He was a force to be reckoned with. His drive and focus, as well as his intense belief in himself and our band, was incredible. He knew we were going to make it. We all knew we were a good band, but no one had that supreme confidence like he did, and it was a great thing, because his confidence and enthusiam were infectious. It says a lot that his hero was Muhammad Ali. That kind of supreme confidence that Ali had - that’s where Duane was coming from.” - Dicky Betts

“I remember that first week at the Whisky and the gigs The Buffalo Springfield did with the Byrds. We could really smoke! That band never got on record as bad, and as hard as we were. Live we sounded like the Rolling Stones.” - Steven Stills / Buffalo Springfield / Crosby, Stills & Nash / Manassas

“I don’t even know if I can take credit for writing “Cliffs of Dover.” It was just there for me one day. I literally wrote in five minutes - kind of a gift from a higher place that all of us are eligible for. We just have to listen for it and be available to receive it.” - Eric Johnson

“I had been to São Paulo the year before and became pretty well acquainted with the music of composer Antonio Carlos Jobim. I had already started playing that music, and the audience response had been pretty good because those songs are so melodic. I knew it would be something that would be appealing, but, I wasn’t thinking that it would make the top of the pop charts or anything like that.” - Charlie Byrd

“I don’t like to go into the studio with all the songs worked out and planned before hand. You’ve got to give the band something to use its imagination on as well. That can make a very ordinary song come alive into something totally different - the X-factor - which is the feel. It’s so important in rock and roll.” - Keith Richards

“I thought ‘Stairway’ crystallized the essence of Led Zeppelin. It had everything there, and showed the band at its best. Every musician wants to do something that will hold up for a long time, and I guess we did that with ‘Stairway To Heaven’.” - Jimmy Page

“I’m not conscious of the speed. It’s not my motive. My motive is displaying a voice through the fingerboard. It can get to the point where I don’t have control over what I am playing. I never end the gig until I can’t sing anymore.” - Alvin Lee / Ten Years After

“Once we played at the Fillmore opposite The Cream. Eric Clapton was there and he played his ass off that night. Backstage, Michael Bloomfield introduced me to Eric, and Eric was so nice. He came up to me, put his arms around me and said “Barry, it’s such a pleasure to meet you.” I couldn’t figure it out. Then Michael told me that he had told Eric I had cancer and two months to live.” - Barry Goldberg - Electric Flag

“Another guitar player who had a tremendous influence on my life was Howard Roberts. I’d listened to a lot of Tal Farlow, Johnny Smith and Kenny Burrell, and I was certainly into those guys, but I was awestruck at the intensity and fire in Howards’ guitar playing. For me, it became a roadmap.” - Jeff ‘Skunk’ Baxter

“I’ve come up with the theory that the music is within. We don’t bring it in; it’s already there. We have to figure out how to get it out.” - Howard Roberts

“People who love jazz musicians love us when we play what we want to play and we’re starving. But as soon as you commercialize your sound like Wes Montgomery did, the jazz fans and the critics are down on you! “- George Benson

“Back in those days, all us skinny white British kids were trying to look cool and sound black. And there was Hendrix, the ultimate in black cool. Everything he did was natural and perfect.” - Ronnie Wood / Rolling Stones

 “I played ‘Eruption’ two times for the record, and we kept the one that seemed to flow. There’s a mistake at the top end of it whenever I hear it, I always think, Man I could’ve played it better - but I like the way it sounds. I’d never heard a guitar sound like that before.” - Edward Van Halen

“My folks were country music performers. They made records and even did a few tours with the Grand Ole Opry. There always were a lot of guitarists around.” - Lenny Breau

“Music washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.” - Berthold Auerbach

“I got home, picked up my ax, turned on the four-track and just played it. I played three solos back to back on Cemetery Gates. The next morning, the second and third solos weren’t bad, but the first had that first take magic! I didn’t touch it.” - Dimebag Darrell

“Duane Allman inspired the group to explore the extended jam format that was already a staple of the Allman Brothers act. Moreover, his ferocious slide playing motivated Clapton to turn in some of the finest guitar performances of his career” - Bobby Whitlock

“With Voodoo Child somebody was filming when we started doing that. We did that about three times because they wanted to film us in the studio, to make us (imitates a pompous voice) ‘make it look like you’re recording boys’ - one of them scenes, you know, so okay, let’s play this and then we went into Voodoo Child.” - Jimi Hendrix

“I think that anybody from the 20th century, up to now, has to be aware that if it wasn’t for Louis Armstrong, we’d all be wearing powdered wigs. I think that Louis Armstrong loosened the world, helped people to be able to say “Yeah,” and to walk with a little dip in their hip. Before Louis Armstrong, the world was definitely square, just like Christopher Columbus thought.” - Hugh Masekela

“My instrumentals try to create some of the basic feelings of human interaction, like anger and joy and love. With Jessica, I couldn’t quite find it, then my little daughter, Jessica, crawled into the room, and I just started playing to her, that’s why I named it after her. I came up with that melody using just two fingers as a sort of tribute to Django. In general, writing a good instrumental is very fulfilling because you’ve transcended language and spoken to someone with a melody.” - Dickey Betts

”You could listen to Woody Guthrie songs and actually learn how to live.” - Bob Dylan

“Neil Young played Helpless, and by the time he finished, we (Crosby, Stills & Nash) were asking him if we could join his band.” - David Crosby / Byrds / Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young

“At a beach house in Malibu that the Buffalo Springfield had rented, I set up my big amps, and we, Jimi Hendrix, Buddy Miles, Bruce Palmer and me, played quite literally for twenty straight hours. We must have made up fifty songs, but there was no tape running, no nothing, we just played for the ocean. That night I really started to learn how to play lead guitar” - Steven Stills

“Wealth and fame can only be so important in the face of musical magic.” - Graham Nash / Hollies / Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young

“My songs speak for themselves. The musicians who play on them and the way they sound and where they were recorded and the way they were recorded is the old Nashville way. They sound as country or more country than a lot of things that are on country radio.” - Neil Young - Neil Young & Crazy Horse / Buffalo Springfield / Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young

“Music is my religion.” - Jimi Hendrix

“Too many pieces of music finish too long after the end.” - Igor Stravinsky

“By then I was getting a little work, doing some playing and getting paid for it, not very much, but enough for me to feel justified in buying a real instrument. I bought a Gretsch with a De-Armond pickup on it and a second-hand Gibson amplifier; it looked like the one Charlie Christian used. I guess it was the same, although there were several models coming out at that time - this would be in I939.” - Tal Farlow

“Back in the day in my teens I was listening to Joe Pass and Wes Montgomery a lot; before that I was listening to what I would call now the more ‘simple’ jazz players (but still very valid), like Barney Kessell or Johnny Smith. I learnt a lot of voicings from Johnny Smith records. Now, I listen to the old blues players; that’s what you’d hear in my house if there was music on. It would be Albert Collins or Albert King.” - Larry Carlton

“Michael Bloomfield was the antithesis of a collector. He didn’t care how old a guitar was; all he wanted was something that sounded good when played it. He cared nothing about the collectibility of an instrument. His philosophy was “A good player can make any guitar sound good.” To Michael, a guitar was just a tool.” Nick Gravenites - Electric Flag

“All of the great sounds that James Burton and Jimmy Bryant were getting, came out of Telecasters” - Albert Lee

“ I feel a great responsibility to deliver for our audience. I am like their servant, but there’s only one honest way to lift people up, which is to feel genuinely elevated yourself. And the way to do that is follow your heart. That’s all we try to do.” - Trey Anastasio / Phish

“Playing live is about going for it. You should see a bunch of people trying out stuff, actually performing, instead of learning the record and recreating it note for note. I can’t play the show the same way every night. I really need to be in a creative environment, every night or I’ll go nuts. My manager accuses me of singing just long enough to get me to my next guitar solo - which is true.” - Brad Paisley

“You never knew what was going to happen in concert. It was a really exciting prospect to go onstage, and you can hear that in the live recordings. Wherever we were and whatever year it was, we always went onstage determined to do our best.” - Jimmy Page

“Although one can get very clever at home, progress comes a lot quicker if you step into a room with other people and start playing.” - Steve Howe / Yes

“Lenny Breau played more great stuff at one time than anybody on the planet with feeling and tone. He was the best that ever lived, bar none.” -Danny Gatton

“Barney Kessel is incredible. He’s just amazing! Nobody can play guitar like that.” - John Lennon / Beatles

“Jimi Hendrix was the most exciting guitarist I’ve ever heard.” - Brian Jones / Rolling Stones

“Kenny Burrell is overall the greatest guitarist in the world and he’s my favorite.” - B.B. King

“The Yardbirds actually asked me to join their band twice. They asked me before Eric Clapton had even left the band, because their manager wanted to get more commercial and Eric wanted to get more purist; their manager wanted to force him out. Then they asked me again when Eric finally left. But I was still too nervous about getting ill while on the road, and I wasn’t quite sure about the politics with Eric Clapton, because we were friendly. So I recommended Jeff Beck, who I think was amazing as far as pushing the Yardbirds to the next level. His imagination on those Yardbirds albums is incredible.” - Jimmy Page

“Over the years I hope I’ve become more of a musican and less of a guitarist.” - Larry Coryell

“Charlie Christian had no more impact on my playing than Django Reinhardt or Lonnie Johnson. I just wanted to play like him. I wanted to play like all of them. All of these people were important to me. I couldn’t play like any of them, though.” - B.B. King

“I don’t believe we (The Cream) felt that we were doing anything earth shattering at all. If anything, we felt we were happily fitting into the scene. Music at the time was very psychedelic, and jazz was being incorporated into the way rock & roll was being made. Back then you had all the American groups that were breaking ground, like the Jefferson Airplane and the Grateful Dead. We sort of felt that we fit into that. After we’d broken up, I was always suspicious about people who talked about the group as a legend - obviously, Cream spawned a wealth of musical directions, but I don’t want to be held responsible for some of them (laughs)” - Eric Clapton

“The hardest studio music to play is Tom & Jerry cartoons. The music makes absolutely no sense, as music. You can’t get into hearing it. There’s nothing to hear-’bleep!, blop! scratch!’ and it comes fast; everything’s first take. That’ll change the way you look at life.” - Howard Roberts

“Hell is a half-filled auditorium.” -Robert Frost

“I like the Pretenders’ James Honeyman-Scott; the Cars’ Elliot Easton, who is one of the best lead players of the last 25 years; Joe Walsh, who’s one of the best rock and roll guitar players of all time; and the Sex Pistols’ Steve Jones. I’m also a fan of Elvis Presleys guitarist Scotty Moore and Surf-Rock guitarist Dick Dale. I shouldn’t forget David Lindley, who played with Jackson Browne for years. It might suprise some people to hear me say it, but the dude is incredible.” - Slash

“I think music in itself is healing. It’s an explosive expression of humanity. It’s something we are all touched by. No matter what culture we’re from, everyone loves music.” - Billy Joel

“For optimum amp tone onstage, plug your amp into your own AC outlet.” - Eric Johnson

“My inspiration comes from the message Duke Ellington gave - you are unique, be yourself, put out that thing that is you, then use your work ethic and produce great music.” - Kenny Burrell

“I’ve always felt rock and roll was very, very wholesome music.” - Aretha Franklin

“Music is moonlight in the gloomy night of life.” - Jean Paul Richter

“Surrender your whole being into a note, and gravity disappears. With one chord, John Lee Hooker could tell you a story as deep as the ocean.” - Carlos Santana

“Without Elvis, none of us could have made it.” - Buddy Holly

“Grateful Dead - that’s it! Nobody in the band liked the name, I didn’t like it, either, but it got around that that was one of the candidates for our new name, and everyone else said, ‘Yeah, that’s great.’ It turned out to be tremendously lucky. It’s just repellent enough to filter curious onlookers and just quirky enough that parents don’t like it.” - Jerry Garcia / Grateful Dead

“Neil Young and Barry Friedman had stolen a Buffalo Springfield sign off the steamroller for Barrys house. They put it up. We all looked at it on the wall and a light went off. That’s how we came up with the name” - Steven Stills

“Americans true music must repeat the thought and inspirations of the people and the time. My people are Americans and my time is today.” - George Gershwin

“I first met Jimmy Page in London in 1961, and he was listening to James Burton, Scotty Moore and Cliff Gallup with Gene Vincent, as was I. These were the rock and roll guys who really sparked our interest in the guitar, and later we delved into other things and went different directions. During my time with Eric Clapton, we talked about what we’d listened to early on, and he was a huge fan of Chuck Berry and Jerry Lee Lewis.” - Albert Lee

“When I heard Apache by the Shadows, that was it! Then there was a guitar player named Steve Gordon, he was “the player” in town, I still remember him saying to me ‘Is there any reason you’re not using your little finger?’” - Ray Flacke / Ricky Scaggs Band

“Aqualung was a difficult and very tense album to record. While I was playing the solo, Jimmy Page walked into the control room and started waving, I thought, should I wave back and mess up the solo or should I just grin and carry on... I just grinned.” - Martin Barre / Jethro Tull

“A jazz musician is a juggler who uses harmonies instead of oranges.” - Benny Green

“When I joined the trio, it was as if I was capable of driving a sports car at 60, but Ray Brown and Oscar Peterson just kept pressing the pedal down, and I was trying to control the car at 80!” - Barney Kessel
“Kenny Burrell is a great musician and his music has helped to make me what I am today.” - Stevie Wonder

“...and what happened was, it’s the same thing an older, more successful writer of ficition might say to a student: write about what you know. And what I knew of course was jazz, but I also knew country, blues and some rock and roll. And that came out.” - Larry Coryell -

“When I first heard Elvis’ voice, I knew that I wasn’t going to work for anybody. Hearing him for the first time was like busting out of jail” - Bob Dylan

“What is so important is that you play for the artist and for the record and for the song. Everything else falls into place. My solo has to be a complement to the singer and the song.” - James Burton

“For me, jazz, R&B, jump swing, Chicago blues, country blues, early hillbilly music, and honky tonk all stem from the same source.” - Duke Robillard

“I’ll say Jeff Beck and Eric Clapton and the Grateful Dead - they are people still here, you know, and they’re here because the music was just as valid today as it was then. Music that is not necessarily to sell lollipops or trucks or beer or anything like that. You know, it’s music to pick up hearts like a crane and put hearts in a different place. And you know, guitars are like cranes to pull people’s hearts from self-imposing misery. Then they put them in a place where people can fly and say - you know, now I feel like I’m a winner because every time I play in a certain place I can tell that I command the attention without having to be phony or flash. In other words, the music of Hendrix and people like that wake people up to their possibilities. It’s more than just dreaming about being a guitar hero.” - Carlos Santana

“He was Jimi Hendrix! He didn’t sound like anybody else but himself. He was like Charlie Parker in his way of playing, he played well, he was a person that made waves. When you heard Jimi Hendrix you knew it was Jimi Hendrix, he introduced himself in his instrument. Many radio stations play records and a lot of the times they don’t call out the names who you just listened to, but when they play Jimi Hendrix, you don’t have to tell me, I know it’s Jimi Hendrix.” - B.B. King

“I get more respect from rap artists than I do from my own industry. I don’t always write the kind of music that country executives want. Rappers are like that too. My words come from the street, and their words come from the street. That slicked-up pop stuff doesn’t come from the street, it’s all pre-fab.” - Toby Keith

“A blown-out tube ripped some of the grind from the amplifier, throwing us into a momentary tizzy. The unusual sound led me to play unusually, and the recorded take turned out to be a keeper. Insriration can come from the most unlikely places. Keep your head on and your ears open.” - Billy F. Gibbons

“If your going to learn to play lead guitar, get an electric guitar. It doesn’t have to be an expensive one. Acoustic guitars aren’t good for learning lead, because you can’t play up very high on the neck and they take heavier-gauge strings which makes it hard to bend notes.” - Eddie Van Halen

“James Brown opened at least six of our House of Blues clubs. He always delivered, but he demanded the respect of an emperor. But, come on, he’s James Brown! I got to play on stage with him. Did he ever fine me ? (Brown was known to fine players for flubbing notes or steps) - I would have loved to have been fined by James Brown!” - Dan Aykroyd / Blues Brother

“Duane Allman didn’t see himself as the bandleader. He led by example, and you gained a lot of respect from Duane if you earned it, if you proved you could keep up with him. If you couldn’t, you’d either end up in awe of him or you might not even like him. He was very different from Jerry Garcia (guitar/leader of the Grateful Dead) who was very easy going. Duane didn’t have time to be easy going. There was much more urgency to his personality.” - Dicky Betts

“I generally play slide guitar in standard tuning, which enables me to switch back and forth between using the slide and fretting notes and chords conventionally without having to relearn the fretboard, as one must do when playing in an open tuning.” - Warren Haynes / Government Mule / Allman Bros. Band

“I think the idea of crossing over is the ultimate expression of being. Maybe it’s time to play rock and roll on disco, maybe it’s time to play heavy metal on R & B, things like that. Certainly culminating on things like Aerosmith doing the rap thing with Run DMC, which if they hadn’t done that, or if Eddie hadn’t played with Michael Jackson, or if I hadn’t done “Hot Stuff”, people would have said, “You can’t do that” - Jeff ‘Skunk’ Baxter

“Don’t be afraid to screw up! One of the key issues to learning is making mistakes. If you’re not making mistakes, you’re probably not having a very good time.” - Robben Ford

“Lenny Breau was a genius - inspired and really loose. I loved how he used the guitar as an extension of his inner freedom, because, obviously, on the outside there were a lot of trainwrecks going on. But when you listen to him play, you hear what kind of guy he really is.” - Steve Vai

“If I’m going to buy a new guitar, I take it to a good ‘hot’ room, like a tiled bathroom, and listen to the wood. If tone comes off the neck, you can bet it’s gonna sound beautiful through an amp.” - Dickey Betts

“Where most people looked forward to the weekend to go out and get crazy, my idea of a good time was to figure out a Scorpions song” - Warren DeMartini / Ratt

“The more you know, the less you know. I don’t feel like I know anything anymore, but I love it.” - Mike Stern

“The whole idea is that if you turn your amp up to 10, you should still be able to play at a whisper - you’ve got to learn to control your hands” - Michael Bloomfield / Paul Butterfield Blues Band / Electric Flag

“Michael Bloomfield came in after rock n roll started, and he was a great guitarist. He idolized me - I know that. What else can I say... he was a young, excitable man. To him, drugs were plentiful, and that was no good. I talked to him like he was a son of mine. He was a great and he was gonna be greater. But he was part of the “in-crowd” and so he never got there.” - B.B. King

“When Ray Flacke came out, it was like ‘What in the heck is this?’ There’s a guy who had that Tele players attitude, and he plugged straight into that amp with a delay, and it was unbelievable the way he would bend those big strings. He was really unique.” - Brad Paisley

“Every once in a while it seems like the cosmos part and something great plops into your lap, that’s how it was with

“Hotel California.” A leased beach house in Malibu All the doors wide open on a spectacular July day probably in 1975, soaking wet, thinking the world is a wonderful place to be; with an acoustic 12 string those chords just oozed out.” - Don Felder / Eagles

“Ritchie Blackmore was a huge early influence on me, but after that I had to find my own way. Johann Sebastian Bach was probably the most influential guy ever on me, then Vivaldi, Beethoven and eventually Paganini. All of a sudden I was thinking in all these other areas, instead of blues riffs.” - Yngwie Malmsteen

“There is still a very strong subculture of people who want to do great things on an instrument, and who are stimulated by hearing people who can. That’s reassuring. But it’s gonna take a person - and I don’t know who this is - to come along and reinvent the guitar as a virtuosic instrument, in a completely different realm than any of us have done, or anybody else in the past. That’s the clincher. Maybe that will happen and maybe it won’t.” - Steve Vai

“Each artist attracts his own different set of fans. And G3 over the years has created it’s own audience as well. They know it’s something unusual and special that they’re not going to get anywhere else; young and old, both sexes, all come out. They all look at each other like, Wow, what are those people over there? They’re surprised at their own diversity.” - Joe (Sach) Satriani

“I would urge a young player to listen to Charlie Christians’ sense of time. I’ll never forget listening to my father (Bucky Pizzarelli) and Tal Farlow playing Christians’ ‘Solo Flight’ backstage at a gig, that’s when it hit me how big of an effect Christian had on jazz guitar. ‘Solo Flight’ was like the gospel.” - John Pizzarelli

“One thing people always ask me is ‘How do you play outside?’ I have no idea how to teach that, but when I was discussing this with our bass player Jesse Murphy, he said, ‘tell them to go cliff diving.’ In other words, when you’re jamming, you have to take risks if you want to find new sounds.” - John Scofield

“In 1938 I went out to Tulsa, Oklahoma to see Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys perform. After the set, a bunch of musicians were sitting around talking, and I remember seeing this young black fellow standing around. He came over and asked if I had an extra pick. I gave him one, and then he asked for my autograph. I asked him if he played. He said ‘yes’ and began to pick. I’ll never forget what I said - ‘My God, you’re good!’ That was the first time I met Charlie Christian. As a guitarist Charlie was simply the best around. He had a way of getting on one note and driving it right into the ground. I figured if you’re going to be great, you’ve got to play a lot of notes, right? Not Charlie - he’d hit one note and he’d own it.” - Les Paul

“Jimmy Page bought a Les Paul because he liked mine, but it was stolen, so he bought a Standard everybody raved about. That’s what he’s famous for, but his first Les Paul was a Custom like mine. I can remember he played a Gretsch before that.” - Albert Lee

“Charlie Christian showed me a lot, and was a great help, but even then, I realised that if I was going to make it, it was no use copying Charlie.” - Barney Kessel

“Barney Kessel was ‘Mr. Guitar,’ the foremost jazz guitarist of his generation. He had an amazing imagination, his solos were incredible, he swung his tail off, he was a heck of an arranger and could out-read anybody.” - Larry Coryell

“There is no finer guitarist than Kenny Burrell.” - George Benson

“We borrowed it all from Coltrane. I started encouraging everybody in the band to listen to John Coltrane - ‘Check it out, see what these guys do.’ They take one chord, the tonic chord, and just play all over it. ‘We can do that too!’ I wanted to make our music something really amazing. I wanted it to be jaw-dropping and turn on a dime and do all of those things that I knew music could do, and nobody told us we couldn’t do it. I shouldn’t say ‘I,’ though - Jerry Garcia was behind it the whole way.” - Phil Lesh

“My ex-wife was trying to be nice once, so she took me to a concert in Los Angeles. I went with her to Symphony Hall, and the orchestra was playing. When the show started, the spotlight was sharp on this one man (Andres Segovia) and he had sombrero on and his guitar propped up like this and, oh man - he was a master! I really heard it. That one guitar sounded like a whole orchestra to me.” - B.B. King

“A local piano player, taught me chord structure and which scales go along with them. Later, I began listening to Bill Evans and McCoy Tyner. Then I got interested in John Coltrane.” - Lenny Breau

“I think a lot of the more successful artists of our time basically have barracudas for managers” - Robben Ford

 “You are the music while the music lasts.” - T. S. Eliot

“Sounds like the blues are composed of feeling, finesse, and fear.” - Billy Gibbons

“We worked the medley on side two of Abbey Road out carefully in advance. All of those mini songs were partly completed tunes; some were written while we were in India a year before. So there was just a bit of chorus here and a verse there. We welded them all together into a routine.” - George Harrison / Beatles

“Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Merle Haggard, Hank Williams - all of them are different styles, but those are the songs that make the times. They’re the songs that last through time.” - Dolly Parton

“We weren’t very professional; she could have gone to almost any town and put together a smoother ensemble, but we were pioneers, and professional musicians probably wouldn’t have come up with what we did. Professional musicians probably wouldn’t have given Janis Joplin the space to be herself, which was probably our greatest gift to her.” - Sam Andrew

“I have no idea who’s steering, and I don’t really care. I just keep going whatever the inclination is. There are threads that are continuous and hold everything together and a major thread is country music.” - Neil Young

“I always enjoyed hearing Stevie Ray Vaughn and his group play. You could go see him every night and his greatness was readily apparent.” - Eric Johnson

“I think my fans will follow me into our combined old age. Real musicians and real fans stay together for a long, long time.” - Bonnie Raitt

“Music should never be harmless.”- Robbie Robertson / The Band

“If you wanted to chart new territories and head off over the horizon, you had to make sure you weren’t overly influenced by what others were doing. So it didn’t matter what other bands were doing. We did what we were doing.” - Jimmy Page

“Everything the Grateful Dead ever did was a demonstration of the value of cross-fertilization. It was unconscious at first, but when we started looking at each other, we had all these different influences. Bobby Weir used to call it electric Dixieland.” - Phil Lesh

 “I would just like to say that Ritchie Blackmore did a bunch of great stuff guitar-wise. I’m happy to play the solo from

‘Highway Star’. I always thought it was one of the most exciting guitar solos I’d ever played.” - Steve Morse / Dixie Dregs / Deep Purple

“Jazz will endure just as long people hear it through their feet instead of their brains.” - John Philip Sousa

“What I think I do is to relate any new material to how similar it is to something else. The closest that I can come up with something that’s already in my experience, the easier it becomes. All I have to do then is remember where it differs, like relating a chord sequence that comes from some other tune, or several different tunes, or maybe parts of them and then work it from there.” - Tal Farlow

“The guitar is a means of expressing music. When you get into the emotional side of it, then it’s not the guitar that matters so much as the music itself. But the guitar is the vehicle I use. It’s how I express myself. As for the emotional side, music takes up where language leaves off. To try and verbalize what music says, emotionally and spiritually, is futile. Let me put it this way, Louis Armstrong once said if you’ve got to ask, you’ll never know.” - Charlie Byrd

“I don’t know whether it was Charlie Christian’s melodic lines, his sound or his approach, but I hadn’t heard anything like that before. He sounded so good and it sounded so easy, so I bought me a guitar and an amplifier and said now I can’t do nothing but play! Really, welding was my talent, I think, but I sort of swished it aside.” - Wes Montgomery

“I’d have to say that “Mr. Crowley” in my most memorable solo. I had spent hours trying to figure out a solo for the song, Ozzy came in and said “it’s crap - everything you’re playing is crap.” He told me to get in there and just play how I felt. He made me really nervous, so I just played anything. When I came back to listen to it, he said it was great.” - Randy Rhoads / Ozzy Osbourne

“Scotty Moore plays one of the first really amazing riffs in rock history on Heartbreak Hotel with Elvis Presley. It was dangerous, it scared everybodys parents, which was part of the attraction then - as it still is now. It totally blindsided me and made me want to get a guitar and do that.” - Roger McGuinn / Byrds

“So much of what we do now started in 1954 at Sun Records in Memphis Tennessee. Those guys were inventing that stuff (Rock & Roll). You can really tell on some tracks, they were actually afraid at times of what they were playing. But Rock & Roll definitely didn’t come before that time; it started right there.” - Brian Setzer

“The movie “The Girl Can’t Help It” (1956) completely did me in, particularly seeing Gene Vincent and the Blue Caps who looked really dangerous. It started me wanting my own guitar. Another motivating factor was the collapse of rock and roll in 1959. Elvis was drafted, Buddy Holly was dead and there was no real danger anymore. Overnight everybody was named Johnny This or Johnny That, and they were all singing this terrible V-neck sweater music. So it was like,

“What are you guys doing with my music? I’m not going to have that taken away!” So I think we decided we just wanted to take it back.” - Jeff Beck

 “ A good composer does not imitate; he steals.” - Igor Stravinsky

“The result was the same as tuning down the strings by a semitone and using a capo at the first fret. With less tension in the strings, the sound was more mellow and softer; it also allowed me to cover a larger span of the fingerboard. I used this for quite a few years, but eventually I went back to the standard fingerboard.” - Tal Farlow

“We were doing a charity show and Jeff Beck actually came down with Jimmy Page. They were both playing “air guitar” as they watched us (laughter)... it was very odd!” - Jim McCarty

“Right away I thought I’d been hit by a hand grenade. Joni Mitchells’ voice, those words... she nailed me to the back wall with two-inch spikes. I promptly fell in love with her.” - David Crosby

“I always like the studio best, once I got the hang of it and the control. I like it because it’s complete control.” - John Lennon

“Just as a blues player can play 20 blues songs in a row but find a way to make each one different, I always want to find different ways to do something.” - Joe Satriani

“A real leader faces the music, even when he doesn’t like the tune.” - Anon

“A lot of guitar players get stuck on a person before they find out who they really are. Every guitar player should remember be yourself - just let it rip.” - Henry Garza - Los Lonely Boys

 “You watch Jimi Hendrix literally reinvent the instrument. He was playing from somewhere else. He was really a kind of hybrid, and I can’t even begin to imagine where he came from.” - Steve Vai

“Just because a guitar is old doesn’t make it good. I’ve seen guitars that were old but weren’t as good as the reissue. For me, it’s not the age that makes it happen, it’s the quality of the instrument.” - Jorma Kaukonen / Jefferson Airplane / Hot Tuna

“Even when I’m touring, I feel like a sideman. Everybody’s working together. We get to play longer solos; it’s not just

“Here’s the record! Thank you for coming Goodnight.” It has always had a “band” feel instead of being a singer and his backup band.” - Vince Gill

“The history of a people is found in its songs.” - George Jelline

“The great British blues guitarists of the Sixties - people like Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, Jimmy Page and Peter Green - could play like virtuosos, but they also understood the importance of energy and intensity.” - Joe Perry / Aerosmith

“Just as certain selections of music will nourish your physical body and your emotional layer, so other musical works will bring greater health to your mind.” - Hal A. Lingerman

“George Harrison and John Lennon were the ones most against touring. I’d been trying to say; Ah, tourings good and it keeps us sharp, but finally I agreed with them.” - Paul McCartney / Beatles / Wings

“Jeff Beck is compelled by his inner artistic drive to keep evolving the instrument. He’ll use the whammy bar with the volume knob and the tone control all at the same time - creating harmonics that no human being should be able to hit.” - Steve Vai

“Michael Bloomfields’ musical understanding was broad and deep, and he knew how to turn that understanding into communication. His influence was phenomenal. His story is about those kinds of things and about the people he knew and the audiences he thrilled and the times he had.” - Mark Naftalin

“The Beatles and the Stones hit us in a big way, I was working in the music store where Jerry worked, and - well, we were thinking while we were working at the music store, all those shiny electric instruments are starting to give us the come-hither. And just around then, the son of the owner of the music store said, ‘Hey, listen, you guys want to start a rock & roll band? I’ll loan you the instruments if I can play bass.’ The Beatles came out, and there was life to what they were playing. Rock & roll seemed viable. It seemed less like prepackaged, marketed pap and more like there was some expansiveness to the music. So we became a rock & roll band at that point.” - Bob Weir / Grateful Dead

“Charlie Christian was the biggest influence on me. The sheer beauty of his lines, and the way he played them, gave people no choice except to take notice. Nobody else could do that then. He had no competition.” - Herb Ellis

“Lenny Breau is one of the true geniuses of the guitar. I suppose he is a musician’s musician. His knowledge of the instrument and the music is so vast, and I think that’s what knocks people out about him. But he’s such a tasty player too. I think if Chopin had played guitar, he would have sounded like Lenny Breau.” - Chet Atkins

“What it is, it’s the remains of an old guitar. All the electrics and the neck are off a Sea Foam Green guitar called Richard, because Little Richard signed it. That’s hanging in a safe place at home. But I didn’t want to lose the sound. I’ve got a big split appearing in the back. I threw it in the air and missed it; it clattered on the floor. But the sound - you couldn’t really put your finger on how it did it. I took all the guts out of it and put it on a new body and it just didn’t sound the same. It’s some freak thing, I don’t know what it is. So whoever says that solid body guitars have no acoustic properties at all, or they think you can get the same tone if you use the same pickup - it’s rubbish, because it just doesn’t have the same quality, the character.” - Jeff Beck

“I was doing someones hair the day I first saw my guitar. A guy was walking down the street with it, and knew that guitar was mine - a 1953 weathered Fender Telecaster. I said I’ll get you the most beautiful guitar you’ve ever seen and I’ll trade you straight across. I found him a purple Telecaster and said here’s your guitar. That was it, it was like he knew that guitar belonged to me.” - Roy Buchanan

“I practice more than ever. Mostly scales and arpeggios... and anything I can’t do.” - Julian Bream

“Sound is what drives my solos, not verbal concepts. I never think ‘I’m going to use a Lydian Dominant scale and then go up a half-step’, even though that might be exactly what I end up doing.” - John Scofield

“I think there are only three things America will be known for 2,000 years from now when they study this civilization: the Constitution, jazz music, and baseball.” - Gerald Early

“Approach your guitar intelligently, and if there are limits, don’t deny them. Work within your restrictions. Somethings you can do better than others, some things you can’t do as well. So accentuate the positive.” - Chet Atkins

“Rock and roll isn’t a career or hobby - it’s a life force. It’s just something I have to do.” - The Edge - U2

“I been doing the same things as in my younger days, when I was coming up, and now here I am, an old man, up there in the charts. And I say, well, what happened? Have they just thought up the real John Lee Hooker, is that it? And I think, well, I won’t tell nobody else! I can’t help but wonder what happened.” - John Lee Hooker
“People today are still living off the table scraps of the sixties.” - Bob Dylan

“I improvised, crazed by the music. Even my teeth and eyes burned with fever. Each time I leaped I seemed to touch the sky and when I regained earth it seemed to be mine alone.” - Josephine Baker

“Where words fail, music speaks.” - Hans Christian Andersen

“All the sounds of the earth are like music.” - Oscar Hammerstein

“Johnny Cashs’ face belongs on Mount Rushmore.” - Kris Kristofferson

“In music one must think with the heart and feel with the brain.” - George Szell

“You may be disappointed if you fail, but you are doomed if you don’t try.” - Beverly Sills

“Music is your own experience, your thoughts, your wisdom.  If you don’t live it, it won’t come out of your horn.”  - Charlie Parker

“Life can’t be all bad when for ten dollars you can buy all the Beethoven sonatas and listen to them for ten years.” - William F. Buckley, Jr.

“Play the music, not the instrument.” - Anon

 “Music is the shorthand of emotion.” - Leo Tolstoy

“ It’s interesting to see how acoustic guitars are emerging as a primary instrument once again. Reminds me very much of what Jim Messina and I were doing back then. You can’t get too far away from an acoustic guitar.” - Kenny Loggins

“There is no truer truth obtainable By Man than comes of music.”- Robert Browning

“Music is something I really have a need to do - I don’t seem to be able to stop” - Jakob Dylan

“The pause is as important as the note.” - Truman Fisher

“It takes a lot of devotion and work, or maybe I should say play, because if you love it, that’s what it amounts to I haven’t found any shortcuts, and I’ve been looking for a long time.” - Chet Atkins

“Silence is the fabric upon which the notes are woven.”  - Lawrence Duncan

“Music is the most important thing. I’m thinking of my future. There has to be something new, and I want to be part of it. I want to lead an orchestra with excellent musicians. I want to play music which draws pictures of the world and its space.” - Jimi Hendrix

“There are a lot of shredders in country music - Redd Volkaert, Brent Mason, Dan Huff - guys like that.” - Brad Paisley

“I can tell whether a person can play just by the way he stands.” - Miles Davis

“Music produces a kind of pleasure which human nature cannot do without.” - Confucius

“Everybody has a different kind of talent and a different timetable as to when they develop.” - Itzhak Perlman

“I like the clubs because we have two or three acoustic guitars up there and we’re not hard-core slamming or stomping through the music. We’re singing it with intricate harmonies and really showing the craftsmanship.” - Toby Keith

“Music is everybody’s possession. It’s only publishers who think that people own it.” - John Lennon

“For something to gain so much popularity and appeal for so many people, it has to be either musically valid or so commercial that you can’t ignore it, especially if your living depends on it. Jazz has never really reached that kind of popularity and I don’t think it ever will, because you’re actually playing for musicians and musicians are not a good crowd to play for. If you are going to try and make some money, you’ve got to appeal to a wider area than that. But I think that it’s the musicians that determine who’s good, who goes to the top, and who gets work. I guess the enthusiasts who are not involved in it, just take the musicians word for it.” - Tal Farlow

“There was nothing that I ever did, no conscious effort to do one kind of behavior or another, I can’t explain what it was, but I can explain that the thinking of the time was that we didn’t want to emulate our heroes. That wasn’t to be done. ‘Don’t try to play the old cliches, play like yourself’ - that’s what people were saying” - Larry Coryell

“The life of the arts far from being an interruption, a distraction, in the life of a nation, is close to the center of a nation’s purpose - and is a test of the quality of a nation’s civilization.” -John F. Kennedy

“Music may achieve the highest of all missions: She may be a bond between nations, races and states, who are strangers to one another in many ways; She may unite what is disunited, and bring peace to what is hostile.” - Dr. Max Bendiner

“Lenny Breau had the ability to reach into your heart.” -Larry Carlton

“I always use the Jeff Beck model. Jeff Beck is just a genius, and he keeps getting better. If there’s anybody in your field you want to aspire to be like, it is a guy who does what he wants to do. Every record at least he comes out with one thing that makes everybodys’ jaw drop. I would hope that Jimi Hendrix would have done that, although, man, the odds are against him because he did so much in such a short amount of time.” - Joe (Sach) Satriani

“By far the most astonishing guitar player ever has got to be Django Reinhardt. Django was quite superhuman, there’s nothing normal about him as a person or a player. And you can’t forget Gene Vincent’s guitarist Cliff Gallup, he was my guiding light through my teenage years. If you want to take a broader view, I think country guitarist Albert Lee is a gas. There’s also Paul Burlison, who played with Johnny Burnette. People don’t think of Les Paul as a rocker, but as far as I’m concerned he laid down the building blocks of rock and roll. From a jazz perspective there’s Charlie Christian, Thumbs Carlyle, Grant Green - they’re all fabulous players. You can’t forget Buddy Guy, I once saw him throw the guitar up in the air and catch it in the same chord. Eddie Van Halen brought tapping to the forefront and I still think he was one of the tastiest players doing it. George Harrisons got great intonation. Eric Clapton is certainly the ambassador, he’s the guy everybody makes reference to. He’s the household name for electric guitar, blues and rock and roll. Erics got so much to offer, in addition to playing so well, he gives the world songs they can identify with.” - Jeff Beck

“Whatever your standing in life, the most important thing is behaving in ways that help other people. It’s the same with music. I am a servant of the music. If I get caught up in ego, I’ll lose everything - it’ll burn and that’s a guarantee.” - Eric Clapton

“If music be the food of love, play on: give me excess of it.” - William Shakespeare

“Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band was a musical fragmentation grenade, exploding with a force that is still being felt. It changed the entire nature of the recording game - for keeps.” - George Martin

“Music is given to us with the sole purpose of establishing an order in things, including, and particularly, the coordination between man and time.” - Igor Stravinsky

“Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds...” - Albert Einstein

“The greats, be it of country, rhythm & blues, rock ‘n’ roll, were messing with your heart and soul. Nothing has the strength, the power of music.” - Sam Phillips

“We all have idols. Play like anyone you care about but try to be yourself while you’re doing so.” - B. B. King