Stone Gossard Quotes

If I'm not a jazz player all the time, I've at least been cued in to what I do by jazz.

Maybe a part of me recognized how right the improvising spirit of jazz is. Not the sounds, but the freedom to work with musicians who work that way. It felt very natural to me, but I think there's a way to do it without it being a jazz record.

They're not particular about whether you're playing a flatted fifth or a ruptured 129th as long as they can dance to it.

So it's really hard for a horn player to comp. But I'm totally into trying to switch those paradigms around and find a little magic space where that works, and try to mine that.

Studying music, everyone sort of has their own style - it's not like everyone's going for the same part.

We play rock & roll, but we swing when we play. We want that ongoing flow, that lightness, that forward rush of jazz.

Making music is like shopping for me. Every song is like a new pair of shoes.

We're so tribal in Britain about music. But my music - my guitar playing, the rhythms, et cetera - just express my personality, because I'm self-taught.

Bill Ward, when you hear his beats, he's not just playing a straight 4/4 beat; he's doing almost a hip-hop beat. There's a song called 'Sweet Leaf.' The drum beat that he's playing, he's trying to kind of swing and funkify it. Now, is he doing a great job of it? Maybe not. Maybe.

I grew up on Dilla, Timbaland, Pharrell, all these drums that are super pocketed, so all those influences come out on a song like 'Ungrateful Eyes,' with all the crazy drum swing.

If you write a country song, and it's the best song you've ever written but throw it out because you're a metal band, you'd be an idiot.

Neo-soul is really less about a sound than it is about a look, in my opinion.

I feel like my music is like - there are always new influences in there.

It's really natural for me to write bilingually.

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

Jazz is neither specific repertoire, nor academic exercise... but a way of life.

The distance between me and Benny [Goodman], was that I was trying to play a musical thing, and Benny was trying to swing. Benny had great fingers; I'd never deny that. But listen to our two versions of 'Star Dust.' I was playing; he was swinging.

I grew up with synthesizers and weird, spacey music-hip-hop, R&B, modern rock-that I heard on the radio. That's influenced the way I play music. It's natural for me to go with what I feel. If I didn't let that other stuff out and stuck to a certain format, I would feel like I was missing out on something. I'm just enjoying my ride and being who I am.

It takes an intelligent ear to listen to Jazz.

Finally I started really opening up as a songwriter and an interpreter and taking songs from all kind of genres and stripping them down to just lyrics and the story inside the lyrics, and trying to make them really mine.

They said Bird played bebop, but Bird could still swing. I've heard a lot of guys play bebop, but they wasn't swinging.

Jazz music is the power of now.

Style to me is incidental. The British are very adept at creating it for its own sake, but the best style is incidental. John Coltrane had a style but it was totally incidental to what he was.

I never considered myself part of rock 'n' roll. My stuff was more adult. It was more difficult for teenagers to relate to; my stuff was filled with more despair than anything you'd associate with rock 'n' roll. Since I couldn't see people dancing, I didn't write jitterbugs or twists. I wrote rhythms that moved me. My style requires pure heart singing.

I knew that when it came time for me to finally make my own album, it wasnt going to be about being a jock. It had to be more personal and intimate.