Jack Bruce Quotes

Always try and play with as many people as possible, even if it's not your style of music, because you will learn a lot.

Sound-wise, I'm really limitless in the way I write songs. Whatever comes out, comes out. Every song is completely different.

The good thing about playing the guitar: You can take on different kinds of music. I'm always doing something different from the last thing I did because I have the shortest attention span on earth.

As an artist, you have to express yourself. I make no excuses for my versatility. I grew up singing classical arias, but I love rock n' roll and jazz standards.

I like writing different types of music. I don't like being stuck into one thing.

So basically, I think music at its best can be everything. It can be totally stupid and very intellectual and emotional at the same time. I don't think all those things shut each other out.

But I've always liked to be the kind of drummer and musician who likes to go outside of what's expected of me, and I've always been able to do more than you necessarily hear with every band I've ever played in.

I think rock & roll has prepared me for a lot of flexibility.

There's so much spirit of integration and democracy in jazz.

I feel my voice can fit in many things so it's very interesting to combine things and music styles.

My musical selections are a reflection of how I grew up. Because, back then, you could see Miles Davis and Ravi Shankar on the same stage. And nobody thought anything of it, other than the fact that it was great music.

Once you think you know the song, then you have go and see how other people have done it.

I'm definitely one of those people that what comes into my head falls out of my mouth. That's a way for me to be even more creative, to sort of get the ball rolling and start parlaying off of somebody and interacting. That charge or that friction sometimes - if it's positive or negative - is inspiring, and it gets people to be I think creative, maybe.

Moment to moment, I'm very much just feeling and trying to synthesize what I'm taking in so it can come out musically. I'll continue to do that. I'm also someone who really likes to push themselves into new situations with new people and try to learn from them. I will be very happy to continue doing that, if people let me.

See, if you put a musician in a place where he has to do something different from what he does all the time, then he can do that - but he's got to think differently in order to do it. He's got to play above what he knows - far above it. I've always told the musicians in my band to play what they know and then play above that. Because then anything can happen, and that's where great art and music happens.

I think one of the most fascinating things you can do after you learn about your own people is to study something about the history and culture of other people.

I think I was just so ecstatic that I was working, and then as it went on, you know, I started to really appreciate that it ["Freaks and Geeks"] was good and that we were doing something a little different and that, you know, everyone was really cool to work with and that it was really talented group of people, and it was just when I was realizing that, that it got canceled.

I never have any trouble playing anything I can think of. The trouble is in thinking of what to play.

I think there are contractual problems with me doing more than a couple, but I would love to go back. I just have a lot of fondness for that show, and for the people. When you get something off the ground, it's fantastic and you feel really close to that group of people. Wherever Selfie goes, the fact that we birthed it, we'll always be tied together that way.

I think that music, or at least the kind of music that I make, benefits greatly from improvisation.

Working with different people and do things that normally I would not do makes the music interesting for me to continue. It keeps me alive. When I'm doing something alone, that is mine, I know how it is. But when I'm working with someone else, I also see the view from the other, and usually learn something new, try something different. This is very important to my happiness.

I just like so many different kinds of music that I like experimenting. I don't want to keep making the same record over and over and over. I'm an 'evolve or die' kind of a musician. I think it's cool to try new things.

I think that's one of the biggest goals I had in making a movie, was listening to what other people had to say.

I think it's incumbent upon me to try to be smart and make good choices and work with good people and work my ass off when I'm working with good people and I have to let everyone have their opinion afterwards. But this is what happens. You make a movie or you're on a show and then you have this experience and everyone tells you what you did. They tell you what you did. That's allowed. That's the experience of being human and subjectivity. That's it. We can only do what we'll do, and I can only do the best I can do.

I'm interested in the way each piece comes together to work as one bigger thing. But The whole point was for people to have fun with it and not be taking it too seriously. I think a lot of people succeeded in that.