Guitar Quotes - Page 31

There was this big skiffle craze happening for a while in England.... Everybody was in a skiffle group..All you needed was an acoustic Guitar, a washboard with thimbles for percussion, and a tea-chest- you know, the ones they used to ship tea from India- and you just put a broom handle on it and a bit of string, and you had a bass..you only needed two chords; Jing-jinga-jing jing-jinga-jing jing-jinga-jing jing-jinga-jing. And I think that's basically where i've always been at. I'm just a skiffler, you know. Now I do posh skiffle, that's all it is.

I believe I love my guitar more than the others love theirs. For John and Paul, songwriting is pretty important and guitar playing is a means to an end. While they're making up new tunes I can thoroughly enjoy myself just doodling around with a guitar for a whole evening. I'm fascinated by new sounds I can get from different instruments I try out. I'm not sure that makes me particularly musical. Just call me a guitar fanatic instead, and I'll be satisfied.

I can't take any more white boys noodling around on their guitars.

Jeff Beck is probably my favorite and biggest influence on the guitar. Touring with him in 2010 was such a milestone. I used to show up early every day just to hear his sound check, which sometimes lasted an hour.

I know that I'm capable of moving around on the guitar. I can express myself the way I want to and feel good about it. But as far as technical chops, I'm not a learned musician.

I had been practicing guitar about six months beforehand; I concentrated mostly on the songs I had to play. I got those down pretty well so they could use me actually playing.

It was great to do August Rush and have all the challenges of playing that character, especially the American accent for the first time and also playing the guitar and the conducting I had to do.

I lie around and play guitar, that's something I do for sure. In fact that's all I do, I think.

Playing guitar is not a beauty contest.

I got a bit bored of just me and my guitar.

When I finally put my guitar in the case the last time, I want to be remembered just as a singer, not as a country singer or pops singer - just a singer.

There are times where I would keep three typewriters on a table, and I'd have three complete thoughts going. With computers, you make folders, files - I don't know about those things. I have sheaves of paper polluted with words and paragraphs. I found it a good tool for me. And it keeps your hands strong for guitar playing.

The stainless-steel frets were a major breakthrough, because of the amount of playing and bending that I do. I have to get my guitars refretted every couple of months.

In 1972, I recorded Gumbo, an album that was both a tribute to and my interpretation of the music I had grown up with in New Orleans in the 1940s and 1950s. I tried to keep a lot of the little changes that were characteristic of New Orleans, while working my own funknology on piano and guitar.

As jazz fans, it was amusing for us to play jazz harmonies on these big, ugly electric guitars.

You've got this piece of wood and some wires, pickups and some strings. How somebody uses that configuration to make something memorable, that's what's interesting to me.

Back when I was in high school, I came out onstage with my guitar and had four guys playing behind me. We were just playing a dance, but I was standing in front of an audience rocking out. I'm still rocking out like when I was a kid. I haven't changed.

You've no right to walk into people's castles and take their guitars.

I put the guitar back in the case. I can't even look at it anymore. Instead, I want to make brownies. I want an end result there's a recipe for. I want to combine eggs and water and oil and chocolate and flour and sugar and vanilla and get something fulfilling.

Guitar playing is just something that came to me and is really second nature now.

I never considered myself a songwriter, but now since I've been working with Nick Lowe, I am contributing to an extent. But I'm the guitarist and he's not, so we compliment each other in a way.

I played lead guitar in a band called The Federal Duck, which is the kind of name that was popular in the '60s as a result of controlled substances being in widespread use. Back then, there were no restrictions, in terms of talent, on who could make an album, so we made one, and it sounds like a group of people who have been given powerful but unfamiliar instruments as a therapy for a degenerative nerve disease.

I'm not very good at the accordion. If I played guitar, I wouldn't be on anyone's album. But because I play the accordion and no one else does, I end up doing strange things.

Strats are my favorite electric guitars, and I've got quite a collection.

If you can play guitar and sing, you can probably get a gig down the road playing at a restaurant, but don't throw your life away chasing something that is so elusive it will only lead you to regret and may turn you bitter.