Guitar Quotations | Page 9

When the Box Tops first started out, I couldn't play guitar much at all. Only after we had our first hit records did I start playing.

We really attempted it in a full-force Flaming Lips behemoth production style. We recorded 100 tracks of our beloved pedal steel guitar and 100 guitar overdubs for the music, and for the vocals we stacked all these crazy harmonies. We wanted to add different layers that people might expect from us, but we tried hard not to change the fundamental nature of the song.

We can't wait to make the second album, ... We learned a lot on the road. When we made 'Hot Fuss' we recorded the songs just the way we played them when we were playing bars in Vegas. This time out we're going to take our time with the guitar and keyboard sounds.

We wanted to help the school districts enrich their curriculum. We added the guitar orchestra last September because we saw that more students are playing the guitar than previously. Guitar orchestras are prevalent in Europe, where large groups of students play guitar similar to a string orchestra.

We're really trying hard to bring back this thing with melody and good songs and a different way of doing it than the other pop bands that are out there right now. It doesn't really sound like pop did five years ago. Guitar is back.

When I joined the band, being that I was going to take this up as a profession, I realized that there were no two finer guitar players in the world that I'd rather play with.

You know, I only claim to play three instruments. My dad is a banker, but a drummer at heart; and my mom used to teach piano lessons when she was younger. So I can play some piano, play a little drums, and fake the bass - but banjo, mandolin, and guitar are my thing.

We came to this number in concert with the Guitar Center. We felt like with $1,000 at cost we could equip someone with a playable instrument that would get them back on their feet.

Two women guitar players on stage at the same time, ... and it took Maria Muldaur to do it.

We play for fun, with LONG guitar solos.

We probably didn't even consider becoming a guitar band again. We used to be a guitar band when we started out and we've been there. The sounds on this record are really exciting and expressive of the lyrics and the music.

We'll see how the guitar players of the world take to it

Writing songs is an essential part of my life: my mother teaches piano, and I have inherited my grandparents' passion for music, especially from my grandfather Tommy, who was a great drummer. It's no coincidence that I play the drums best, but I am also good with the guitar and the piano.

How we approached this was I wanted this to be personal in a way. It's not a big, epic Hollywood score but really personal and intimate, and we thought guitar would be the perfect instrument for him because he's young and he has an undying spirit and all that stuff and we went on that feeling totally.

I played a couple of ideas and then had this unusual texture underneath which was like this little granulated kind of pipe organ almost like a scratchy record which he started [inaudible] brilliantly. "Oh I love that song." And when things go fine, it's good. So he started loving that song and that song was used quite a lot in the movie which is very granulated stuff on the guitar.

There were basically three themes. One was the sun theme which is the guitar when he'd get sun on his leg and it comes again in the end. And there's of course the lullaby which Dido sang, "If I Rise." And then there's this driving guitar which is the motivation theme.

Currently I'm working with Parker Fly on a new Midi guitar to arrive next year.

I have no secrets; all of these things have been discussed at length in guitar magazines over the years but are far too elaborate to cover in one article.

I borrowed a guitar at age 16 and taught myself to play because I wanted to write songs.

I was left with an urge to make the guitar sound like things it shouldn't be able to sound like.

I'm not a good guitar player.

I like to surf. I like to play guitar. I want to do college classes online. I wanted to do marine biology for a long time, but I don't know.

Yeah, Jody [Porter] left. He's a great guitar player. We have a guy named Phil Hurley who is going to go out on tour with us now. I'm not sure if he'll end up as the permanent guitar player, but he's the type of guy who can kind of step in and play anything. He was with the Gigolo Ants before, and he's really good.

I've been collecting some more high-end guitars. I have an old Martin D28 from the '60s, a beautiful, classic Martin that I know I played on 'Mariachi.'

These days I keep a journal, so I'm constantly sketching down my thoughts, or lines that come to me...ideas for songs. And then when I have a moment to myself, I'll sit down with my guitar and open my journal, and start kind of massaging things together, and see if a song takes shape. Or sometimes, I'll just be hanging out with my guitar and come up with a chord progression or a lick, and that'll sort of sit around for a while waiting to marry itself to some words. So it's sort of haphazard and it's like...junk culture. I go around finding shiny objects and I glue them together laughs.

These days, my main guitar amps have been Magnatone. They're beautiful. Magnatones have actual tremolo, which I recently learned about guitar amps. Often what guitar amps call vibrato is really just a volume Up and Down. But Magnatone has a true vibrato, which is pitch bending. And so, it's just a lush sound.

I'm not Amy the star, I'm Amy the girl with the guitar.

I actually write my own music whenever I have a chance. I play guitar and sing.

My favorite travel pastime is writing music, either with my guitar or on my computer.

My ideal travel companions are my surfboard, wetsuit, and guitar.

It was 2002, we all got guitars for Christmas and started playing in my garage that summer, rehearsed there and in a warehouse for a bit for about a year. We did our first gig in June 2003 and we played a few gigs in and around Sheffield for a bit then started doing gigs outside of Sheffield about this time last year, recording demos while all this was going on.

I pestered the hell out of everybody I ran into until I could play the guitar well enough to write and sing with it.

I got to be about 13 and everyone started playing guitars and being in rock bands. There was no place for me with my trumpet and I wasn't cool anymore. Although now if I played the trumpet it would be the coolest thing in the world.

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

I didn't marry a Beatle, I married a broke student who played the guitar and ponced all my grant money off me for fags.

I'm singing and dancing and playing guitar. I really enjoy pushing myself into different aspects. I'm not going to do this for the rest of my life, but I want to keep challenging myself. And if I'm fearful of something I definitely want to step into it and see how good or bad I am at it.

My second record was all about big ideas - I was trying to make big statements about the culture, about life. I think in a certain way, I was a 27 year old kid with a guitar

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.

I started out with the guitar and was a studio musician back in the 50s, and then got shot in my finger.

Practice like the Devil.

I would think that the drumstick is probably pretty good. Because you can put that anywhere. If you are a strong guy, you can put it in the throat, the nose, the mouth, the ear. It's also easily concealed. The guitar is pretty good, but you have to break it. And that's pretty difficult.

My parents are artists, so I grew up with my mom having bonfires, seven guitars, and talented musicians and artists around like Jack Hirschman.

I wanted to be able to play guitar. I wanted to be able to make music hurt.

When I was 6 I thought that I wanted to be a musician - like a singer-songwriter. That's what I romantically envisioned for myself. But in reality the experience of getting into music was just the opposite. My parents signed me up for classical guitar lessons, which made for two years of the most depressing Wednesday evenings.

Cooking is work that is traditionally done by working-class people. The work itself is not glamorous. It's repetitive, and it's a lot closer to factory work than art, whatever level you're doing it at. Certainly chefs are used to living like rock 'n' rollers to some extent, inasmuch as we get a lot of those fringe benefits without having to learn how to play guitar.

I wouldn't want to compare myself to David Byrne whom I consider a genius, but what I think what we have in common is that he's also a guy who is very interested in the world and who has a lot of passions beyond singing and playing guitar.

I always have a guitar with me. Actually, I've got several, I play every day. And I enjoy it. I'm never very far away from them. I swear I only ever get a couple days when I'm away from a guitar, and I never like it! There's always one close by, and I play every day. Or I'll be working on something in the studio and play around a bit. It's an extension of me, really.

I'd rather people interpret the songs and get whatever they can out of them instead of thinking about me crying in a room with a guitar.

I was in 'Jacques Brel' Off-Broadway for many years, so I've always been a singing actress, but the songwriting was a complete surprise. I had never written a song in my life. We were on the road with 'Jacques Brel' doing the national tour, and I picked up a guitar one day and I wrote a song.

There are other tracks that are more reliant upon the beat. Like nobody's going to sit there and play "Harlem Shake" on the guitar!

(I was) my own teacher and pupil, and thanks to the efforts of both, they were not discontented with each other.

When I started to play with my fingernails, it was not just for volume. The most important thing was giving the guitar different colors in its voices...

I've had only three wives and three guitars in my life, though I've flirted with others.

Electric guitars are an abomination, whoever heard of an electric violin? An electric cello? Or for that matter an electric singer?

The guitar is the most unpredictable and least reliable musical instrument in existence...and also the sweetest, the warmest, the most delicate, whose melancholic voice awakes in our soul exquisite reveries.

The guitar is the easiest instrument to play and the hardest to play well.

My first instrument was the piano; I played in the church, and before that I sang in church. I didnt learn the guitar until I was 24 years old.

He could play the guitar just like ringing a bell.

All I want for Christmas is a rock n roll electric guitar...

Most records, you build from the drums and bass up. This one, we started with the vocals in Nashville and recorded them live with just the guitars and tried to make that complete and lovely-sounding without any adornment at all. I really wanted to get something with the vocal that I've never gotten before Armchair Apocrypha.

I began to learn a lot of chords and rhythms. It was a bit boring at the time but came in very handy later on.

Johnny Depp already seen how alcohol and drugs can get in the way of a career. And you have to remember one thing: Johnny was a guitar player and a rock-and-roller way before he was an actor. When he came to Los Angeles, he came with his band.

You watch the country-music awards that they show on the television, and you see country music has reached about 1985. It's all huge processed drum sounds and chiming chorus guitars and programmed synths bobbling along in the background.

The mind itself is an art object ... The mind is a blue guitar on which we improvise the song of the world.

I actually bought a travel guitar, and that guitar is really cool. You can actually fold the guitar, and you can plug headphones into it, but it's acoustic, or semi-acoustic.

How could I have not known about Ume? An Austin trio fronted by a whirling dervish of singer guitarist who in the standard PR band head shot looks like she wouldn't hurt a fly; yet give her a guitar, a Marshall stack and a mic and stand back, way back. She shreds. File under - Do Not Overlook and Go Tell Your Friends

No sound system. No band. No guitar. No entertainment. No cushioned chairs. No heating or air-con. Nothing but the people of God and the word of God. And strangely, that's enough. God's Word is enough for millions of believers who gather in house churches... Jungles... Rainforests, and middle-eastern cities. But is his Word enough for us?

Personally, being somewhat envious of Richard's (Thompson) songwriting and guitar playing, it's somewhat satisfying he's not yet achieved household-name status. It serves him right for being so good.

Punk. . .was more a kind of do-it-yourself, anyone-can-do-it attitude. If you only played two notes on the guitar, you could figure out a way to make a song out of that, and that's what it was all about.

I guess, and it may be a flaw, that I think about rhythm more [than anything else]. I'm always wanting to find something unusual. I've started to try and write more traditionally, but for whatever reason, I tend toward trying to find something that sounds more like a pattern to me.

I don't touch electric guitars. It's just not my thing - I stick with acoustic guitars only.

I have always been drawn to percussion and drums, to bass and piano, in music much more then I am drawn to the guitar and the other lead instruments.

Rock & roll is not so much a question of electric guitars as it is striped pants.

The most important part of any rock song is the guitar solo.

They make this drink in Brazil Called cachaca. It's sugar can alcholho. Costs 35 cents a quart. One quart of that stuff and you see God. Two quarts and you graow a pair of tight pants and an electric guitar.

Ziggy played guitar, jamming good with Weird and Gilly.

Most of our songs were written on acoustic guitar before they made it to the practice stage.

My first instrument was actually the trombone, but that didn't last long. Soon I was playing guitar in bands from the time I was 11 or 12.

Just the other day someone threw a bra duct-taped to a tennis ball. I just stood there, playing guitar, thinking how this was totally premeditated. Some girl sat around inventing a way to get her bra onstage from 40 rows back.

Guitar Hero has been so successful that a lot of people were questioning how it was possible to innovate on the most successful franchise of its kind.

Link Wray is the all-time legend.

To me, the hook of the riff is what makes a great guitar recording. It's the backbone of the whole song. When you have a strong riff, it's the rocket fuel for the track.

My guitars, Cadillacs, and hillbilly music Is the only thing that keeps me hanging on.

I don't really feel like a rock artist, but I guess in the small category of the world of music genres, that's where I fall in because I've got a guitar.

I started writing songs when I started learning guitar.

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.

Kurt Cobain was Nirvana. He named the band, hired its members, played guitar, wrote the songs, fronted the band onstage and in interviews, and took responsibility for the band's business decisions.

The jam stuff doesn't appeal to me in general. My newfound love for the Dead came from Robert Hunter and Jerry Garcia's songwriting, not the elaborate guitar solos. I'm a song person. Once it starts to break out of that structure and become loopy, it's uninteresting to me.

I sit around and play acoustic guitar - usually acoustic, sometimes electric, occasionally piano, but more often guitar, just trying to come up with tunes. Ideas kind of pop into your head.

Elvis was the reason I picked up the guitar.

By the time I was 12 or 13, I felt that I was special, because I could play the guitar and write songs.

When I was your age, son, we didn't even have a damn Guitar Hero, we had to play AIR boy, you hear me? AIR!

There's people that say “It's not fair You have all that stuff.” I wasn't born with it. It was a horrible process to get to this. It took me my whole life. If you're new at this- and by “new at it.” I mean 15 years in, or even 20- you're just starting to grow traction. Young musicians believe they should be able to throw a band together and be famous, and anything that's in their way is unfair and evil. What are you, in your 20s, you picked up a guitar? Give it a minute.

This record may explain what I've been doing during the last 12 years when I haven't had an electric guitar in my hands.

While I recognize in the back of my mind that I am an occasionally brilliant guitar composer and arranger, innovator and player.

When we started writing, we went back to the basics of just kind of jamming out riffs, ... That brought us back to some of our influences. It made the songs seem like some of them could use guitar solos. We just thought we would expand on that. We're trying to contribute in our way bringing this element back to rock music.

We all listen to the same music; we all came from the same place, standing on the shoulders of the same giants. I'd be willing to bet that The Rolling Stones are more envious of our lifestyle, living here in Kentucky, playing loads of different Americana music. That's what they were going for. We're closer to the source than they are, really. I think they would love to come down and stay in Covington with us and stay up until 5 in the morning, playing guitar and singing Townes Van Zandt songs and Leadbelly songs. It'd be right up their alley. It's no mistake that we have the same kind of thing going on.

What Guitar Hero has done is to turn music inside out. Whereas the iPod made music very personal, very singular - you put your ear-buds in and you listen to it - Guitar Hero turned it around and made it very social. So it is fun to play. It's fun to play against people.

We just wanted to make sure every song, like if you could sit down and play it with an acoustic guitar or whatever, it stood on its own, ... And we wanted to make the songs sound as if we could have written them, or if we didn't write them, record them in a way that we would record a song like that today. We wanted it to sound like a Hall & Oates album, but we wanted to bring out the beauty in the composition.

We weren't expecting it, but there are always a few token nominations every year. There are a lot of those Class of 2005 angular guitar bands on the list and I'm pleased that we stand out as something completely different.