Guitar Quotes

I even played bass for a while. Besides playing electric guitar, I'd also get asked to play some acoustic stuff. But, since I didn't have an acoustic guitar at the time, I used to borrow one from a friend so I could play folk joints.

My father played guitar, so I always wanted to play for that reason. But I think the biggest reason was just the '90s in general - growing up listening to the Smashing Pumpkins, Green Day and bands like that, and going to concerts and thinking it was the coolest thing in the world.

My real interest in music was the old 78 records and the sound of the music. I loved it and began to realize that one of the main sounds on those old records I loved was the guitar.

With Pearl Jam, everybody is so good at what they do, it's hard to get up the courage to say, Can I sing this part, or, I want to play guitar. I feel like I have more courage to do that.

If you told me I was going to live to 240, I would take 10 years off and try and act. I don't have that kind of time, so I'd much rather stick to playing guitar.

And I've also come to the conclusion that, as far as guitar solos and things like that are concerned, it's more important to complement the music rather than take away from it.

What I couldn't say verbally I was able to express physically through the guitar.

I listened to classical guitar and Spanish guitar, as well as jazz guitar players, rock and roll and blues. All of it. I did the same thing with my voice.

I bought one of those Learn How to Play Guitar Chords By Yourself and it shows you the diagram where to put your hands and I took that in my room, sat with my singles and learned how to play guitar.

There's no leader of this band, and there never will be. That's the key. You can't control how the public perceives you-people see rock'n'roll bands as the guitar player and the singer.

A friend of mine, that I had known for some time, came up one day with an old guitar. I don't know where he got it, I don't know how long he'd had it, but he knew about two chords on it. He proceeded to teach them to me, and then we proceeded to go crazy over music.

If you make it sound too much like a synth, it will just sound like a guitar part played on a synth.

George wrote Taxman, and I played guitar on it. He wrote it in anger at finding out what the taxman did. He had never known before then what could happen to your money.

I never took guitar lessons. I took classical piano lessons from the age of six when we lived in Holland. And when we moved to America, it was just the typical thing except I was really good at it; so was my brother.

That's pretty much why I went into show business because I wanted to have a guitar and sing unaccompanied, that was like my fantasy of the perfect life.

Anyone who writes knows that ultimately the majority of your time is spent alone in a room with a piano or a guitar, no matter what the project is.

The Goth character was a difficult thing to get my head round. I'm not really a fan of Goth music. I'm more a piano and guitar man - that's what I love.

The Tinted Windows shows were very fun but it's very different for me as a performer. I'm not playing music - I'm just singing and I missed that. I miss rocking out on keys, drums, guitar... whatever it is.

My whole career from the early 70s on has been mind-blowing. I didn't imagine in my life that I would ever be considered a guitar player first of all because I started off as a singer.

I stuck with that size because I could bend the strings so well, and somewhere along the line I must have gotten it into my mind that I had small hands, so I was thinking I'd never be able to play a full-scale guitar, but I also felt like I was cheating or cutting corners.

You can be a singer, and you can be a guitar player, but putting them together is another animal.

I've actually had a melody on my guitar since the day I learned how to play it, back when I was 7. And for some reason I can't add lyrics to it.

I sit down and create atmospheres, start playing guitar or piano and just sing whatever comes out of my mouth.

I think when I began, I played distortion more than the guitar. The results of my strumming. Now I play the twang of the string, which is a lot closer to the source of the sound making.

The guitar has a kind of grit and excitement possessed by nothing else.

I wouldn't just have other people write songs and me go out and sing it. I would sit down with a guitar and write 11 or 12 good songs for an album and that is gonna take a long time.

Now they have banging guitar and no bass and call it rock, but that's not what I call rock.

There were times I used to go to parties when I was, you know, like 15-, 16-years-old, and I'd always bring my guitar, and all my friends would be like, sing one of the Smokey songs. And everything I sang was his music, and I could sound just like him.

It's like that Simpsons joke - they're filming a cow in a movie and they go, 'OK, we'll tape a bunch of cats together to make a cow', and it's like, 'Why don't you just use a cow?'. For some reason that is novel - like, 'Oh, my guitar sounds like a piano and now if I can just get my piano to sound like my guitar'.

I was a schooled musician. When I made 'Blue Velvet', I told everyone what to do. I was an arranger. I learned music in school I told the band to play this. I told the guitar to do that.