Jeff Beck Quotes

Nobody else in the world has a form like the Native American musical, and Americans should be very proud.

The most important thing is that you honor that musical integrity, whether you make music that sounds like ABBA or you make music that sounds like Void.

I found a certain kind of music congenial to me; it never occurred to me to write music that was academically acceptable.

Elvis' early music has drama because as he sang he was escaping limits.

The whole path of American music has been so much about the recognition of stylistic diversity, and the recognition of the importance of music which was from one of the vernacular traditions.

My house was full of music. My main memories are of the record player at home: it was all Beatles and Rolling Stones, and we danced around the living room; that started me off on instruments, and I've done nothing else ever since.

I grew up with classical music blasting in my parents' living room and my older brother's practicing saxophone in his room listening to jazz... a beautiful chaos.

I had to be at least 8 or 9; I was listening to everything on the radio. You name it, I heard every song.

I always loved music and would listen to the radio and watch out for new stuff. When I was about nine or ten, I would go around to me friend's house on a Sunday when the top twenty was broadcast on the radio at 6 P.M., and we would tape it on a cassette, and then we would take turns in sharing it over the next week.

I had a little radio, and I listened to music in my bedroom when I was supposed to be sleeping. I was probably 6 or 7 years old, and I loved the DJs who would come on and talk about the artists and the songs they were singing, and they gave away prizes. I was like, 'This is a cool job!'

You know, we were outdoorsy types, my folks, and one of the first tapes I got, a friend gave me a cassette tape of Ella Fitzgerald singing with the Count Basie orchestra. And it was the first time, really, that someone's voice had really spoken to me, and it was just so pure.

I started playing in my first band when I was 12. I like to date myself by saying I was in a New Age band when it wasn't ironic; it was actually called new wave because it was new.

When I was 12 years old I discovered Bill Monroe and my dad got me a mandolin.

Jazz is not background music.

jazz is the expression of America's romantic self, its sensual potency, its lyrical force.

Funk could very easily be called jazz, but you call it funk. Does that really matter? People dig that they associate themselves with certain genres, but the genres to me are made up things, like an imaginary world.

The first time I listened to jazz was when I was 8.

My earliest memories have to do with music.

For me, I just want to sing about life. And since I come from a spiritual background, I turned to jazz, because I feel it's still sacred, like gospel. It's serious music, but it allows room to sing about so much other stuff as well.

If you're a lay person listening to jazz, you don't necessarily understand everything that's happening within the form. But you get the sense of it, the feel of it, because you're getting to hear something that develops right in front of your face.

Listening to my dad playing guitar along to 'Sleepwalk' by the Shadows was probably the first time I discovered emotion in music.

Jazz isn't like pop, where you sell millions of records with a hit. Your spirit and soul aren't important in pop music. But jazz is like classical music. If people like you, they'll remember you and you'll last forever.

Rock & roll seemed to just come to us, on the radio and in the record stores. It became our music. . . But then we uncovered another, deeper level, the history behind rock and R&B, the music behind our music. All roads led to the source, which was the blues.

Once there was Louis Armstrong blowing his beautiful top in the muds of New Orleans; before him the mad musicians who had paraded on official days and broke up their Sousa marches into ragtime. Then there was swing, and Roy Eldridge, vigorous and virile, blasting the horn for everything it had in waves of power and logic and subtlety - leaning into it with glittering eyes and a lovely smile and sending it out broadcast to rock the jazz world.

The way I was singing the songs was jazz