Wes Montgomery Quotes

Creatively, I'd like to achieve not only being an artist, but being a businessman and having my own music home.

When I graduated college, I had a fairly successful weekly club gig and was buying more studio equipment and writing my own music. I realized I didn't want to work.

This business is about working. It's really not about glamour. For me, the most glamorous thing about it is to b able to get on stage and perform my music for people. That's the privilege. And that's what all the work leads up to, and that's why it's worth it to me.

I started singing very early. I was six or seven years old, and I was singing along to TV commercials and figuring out, 'Oh, hey, I can sing in tune. This is really cool.' But the songwriting thing came much much later, when I was 19 years old.

I started out doing the acting, and there was always an interest in music, and then the music just took off.

I worked flipping cheeseburgers and Big Mac's at McDonald's, purchased a microphone, and cleared all the stuff out of my basement and started making music.

As a working musician, your first instinct is to try and do your job. It wasn't always my aspiration to sing; I just wanted to be a great working musician. But then Flying Lotus suggested I try, and nothing has ever been the same since.

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.

I used to be focused on being the dopest rapper in the game, and then once that became what I was, I wanted something different, and I wanted to become the best businessman in the game. I wanted to learn how to master the business like I mastered the rap.

I literally came out of high school thinking that I was going to do something in the sports world because I grew up with a very sports-oriented family. My last year of school, I got involved with playing guitar and singing, and I joined a band and I just decided that year somehow that I was going to play music.

I started being a songwriter pretending I could do it, and it turned out I could.

I was in college, and very disappointed. I majored in commercial art and interior design for three or four years. At that time, it seemed the thing I really wanted to do, production design, just wasn't available in the U.K., so I turned to music.

I am pretty embroiled in moving on and moving forward with music.

If you're an artist, it's great to have a knowledge of the business and be educated about that, but you've got to keep the balance right between business and artistry; otherwise, you get cynical.

I know a lot of people at some point in their business careers decide they'll just cash in and do something else, but for some reason, I've never had that feeling.

I wanted to be a pianist but it just wasn't my thing. I guess I wanted to stand up rather than sit down.

When I was younger, I always wanted to be a musician, a performer and an entertainer - but I never thought about becoming a poster or anything like that. It's pretty cool.

Growing up, my parents did everything they knew how to do to support me. My dad was always kinda my roadie; he drove me from gig to gig. But I got my own gigs. I was this 12-year-old kid, shuffling business cards, calling people, telling them I wanted to play.

As the years passed, and I was nine, 10, 11 years old, it became obvious I was going to start up a business of some sort.

I've always been in music. I started out in music, and I will continue to do music.

So I played the acoustic guitar and harmonica and stomped my foot and I think I was right in assuming that Greenwich Village would be the best place to perform my own material and possibly get some attention, move on to making records and all.

I don't really count myself as a very sophisticated businessperson. I'm a creative artist. All I know from business I've picked up along the way.

I love what I do. I made my first record in '57. I don't think I'll ever get tired of making records and writing songs and singing and being in the music business.

I started making music for fun, but I had two parents who were very much in the business. I didn't run around trying to get the spotlight. I was very shy. I never sang in front of people 'til I was about 17 years old.

Peter was sick of being a pop star, the guitar god, and so he decided to teach himself other instruments. Among the instruments that he picked up was the mandolin.