Bill Frisell Quotes

I always feel I have a long way to go in my playing and my music.

I prefer to think of myself as a musician who is still learning and trying to do something every time out.

The experience awakened 'my tremendous musical ambition, which has never subsided to this day.

The day I stop learning and I don't try to make myself better on the guitar, that's the day I hang it up and say, 'Goodbye.'

You're a constant student, as a musician.

One of the things that's influenced me musically was my experience at Brown University. I was surrounded by musicians that I really admired, and felt challenged to come up with music, lyrics, and recordings that stood up to the expectations of those musicians and myself.

In the beginning of my career, I wanted to be chased by girls more than anything - that's why I got the guitar. By the time we were in ABBA, the music was the only important thing.

I think there are always people who, when they get the bug to play an instrument, they want to get as good as they can with it rather than just be simply adequate at it. You run into them every once in a while - some kid who wants to be the next Stevie Ray Vaughan, for whatever reason, and plays exactly like him.

Playing music is a lifetime's work. And if you want to carry on with it, you have to try to better yourself. You have to see where the music can take you.

I was a late bloomer, but I realised that people really liked it when I played blues scales and, with the piano, I had that insatiable need to prove myself.

When I started to make music I wasn't as serious at first.

I love stretching myself musically.

I wanted to play music. I didn't think about where it would go or what it would do.

You can read all the textbooks and listen to all the records, but you have to play with musicians that are better than you.

From childhood I was passionately fond of music and wanted to be a musician. I have no recollection of any real desire ever to be anything else.

I'm into something that definitely does require your attention, and with that, you're not going to run out of things to do. You're never going to be the master of music.

You never stop trying to make progress as a musician.

There's no musician who just wakes up one day and decides, 'This is what I want to do.' It takes some development.

Everyone has to start somewhere! I certainly didn't sound great when I first started playing, and I remember all my guitar teachers, both good and bad, and what it felt like to struggle with even the simplest of things.

I wouldn't be one-third of the player I am today if it wasn't for Avenged. They're an inspiring group of guys, and I'm constantly challenged to write things beyond my ability and then figure out how to play them.

When I was younger, I always wanted to be either a pianist or a classical singer, and when I discovered songwriting, it was like a new portal had been opened.

When one knows at an early age that their gift, talent and direction is musical, one tends to focus on that and let nothing interfere or impede the forward motion toward the end of that rainbow. And after 50-something years of rockin' out, you still realise there is no end to that distant rainbow until one's last sunset.

I feel like every time I write a song, it feels like the first time I wrote a song. It's just as hard; it doesn't get easier, but that's why I love it: because it's a challenge every time. I also feel like I'm learning new ways.

I thank the Creator of the universe to have discovered the discipline of music was the greatest gift that I could have been given, the possibility to be a student working in the world.

Now, when we first started, I would be playing something good and then feel like I wasn't doing the right thing and launch into some idiotic cliche. Luckily for me, Bobby was patient.