Chet Atkins Quotes

I may not be a first-rate composer, but I am a first-class second-rate composer.

Everyone in my family is pretty much tone-deaf.

I don't really admire musicianship per se - as is obvious from my own playing.

I have been an author for 20 years and an ass for 55.

I have no talent when it comes to pianos or guitars or any of that, even karaoke. For karaoke, I have to be wasted to get up there and sing.

I used to feel for years and years and years that I was very remiss not to have written a novel and I would question people who wrote novels and try to find out how they did it and how they had got past page 30. Then, with the approach of old age, I began to just think: “Well, lucky I can do anything at all.

He never ever learned to read or write so well, but he could play his guitar like he was ringing a bell.

I am very unmusical. I can't carry a tune. I would never be able to play an instrument.

I was young and foolish then; now I am old and foolisher.

The only thing I was any good at was music.

I have absolutely no musical talent of my own!

By many peoples' standards, my playing is very primitive but by punk standards, I'm a virtuoso.

Even in junior high, I always knew I had a talent for music and I knew I could make money that way.

My first two records are so simply constructed. The reason isn't because I wanted to make simple music. It's because I don't really have the chops.

But I'm tone deaf - window-shattering tone deaf. I can't sing for the life of me. I can't sing or dance, so no remake of 'Grease' for me!

I have no musical talent at all. I was banned from music classes and told I would never be able to understand anything. I still don't think I can sing, but somehow I get away with it.

See, I'm not a very good musician.

I took the rhythm place, which a lot of people didn't know how to do the way I could, and this was really the first time that Johnny had a rhythm guitar player.

Any idiot who knows five chords can bang a song together. But it's probably going to be rubbish.

I know I'm a strong performer. I'm not an evolved musician.

So by the time I taught myself the bass guitar at the age of 14, my hands were already pretty nimble.

Frank's bands could play the hardest stuff and make it seem like no big deal.

I know I'm not musically talented.

Hopefully, I have a certain amount of what you call musical talent.

I play piano very badly. That's my great regret.