Derek Bailey Quotes

The spirit of jazz is the spirit of openness.

I just like music all the way around the board. I can't stick to one thing - I've got to move around.

I try to do things that keep me interested. And play music that moves me. I like to move around and play in a lot of different ways.

I've always done very 'composed' music and worked-out solos. But sometimes it's fun not knowing where you're going.

I don't put boundaries on myself when I sit at the piano.

Music to me is spontaneous, writing is spontaneous and it's all based on not trying to do it. From beginning to end, whether it's writing a song, or playing guitar, or a particular chord sequence, or blowing a horn, it's based on improvisation and spontaneity.

Milton, of all people, gave the most perfect definition of the state of mind required to play jazz: ' with wanton heed and giddy cunning.' That's how you play jazz.

I like playing the stuff where I don´t know what I´m gonna play. Like the end of Fake Plastic Trees or the end of Paranoid Android - stuff where I can do anything and no one notices or cares.

The wonderful thing about Jazz is its willingness to take chances.

Jazz is letting everybody do his or her thing with the music.

Some people wish above all to conform to the rules, I wish only to render what I can hear. There is no theory. You have only to listen. Pleasure is the law.

Don't play the saxophone. Let it play you.

I don't always have to be on what is the newest in music is. I'm slowly educating myself in music. For me, I feel more free in not knowing everything in what I'm doing. You can start making up too many rules for yourself. It should just be love and fun and feeling good.

I'm playing all the right notes, but not necessarily in the right order.

See, there were certain rules I'd always used, and people like Trane, they would break those rules.

Well, you know, it's been interesting because an album is just a snapshot of where you are at that time. Not all pictures of everybody are just in jeans and a 'T' shirt, or a ball gown. You have many different sides and this is a snapshot of where you are at that time.

If there's a song where there's a possibility of guitar stuff that would be fun to listen to, go for it. Don't worry about what anybody thinks.

What I have to do as a musician is do everything that is not on the music.

Journalism is my first love. But music comes in a close second. What's important for me is that whatever you do, whatever your passion is, you should have another passion - something in your life. And when I put on that musician hat and I put the bass in my hands, I'm not Lester Holt the TV guy anymore. I'm just Lester Holt who likes music.

I have always thought of music as a highway with many lanes.

There were no rules, other than that the song should sound good and be fun to play.

When I start playing I'm just a rollercoaster of sound. I don't know what's coming next, I never do, and I sit and sign and talk to the people afterwards.

I didn't really know what I was doing when I started. I just started writing songs. After two songs I just continued to explore it.

With a hundred ways to do a dozen things, why not try it all?

No two people on earth are alike, and it's got to be that way in music or it isn't music.