Jon Fishman Quotes

When I heard Grateful Dead music, I knew that it was the most powerful force on the planet.

We had a really vast music collection and I was raised around rock'n'roll, it's just the way it was.

I never listened to the Grateful Dead as a teen; the only exposure I got was what came through the walls when my sister was listening to them.

The big turning point, really, was the Beatles' influence on American folk music, and then Roger took it to the next step, and then along came the Lovin' Spoonful and everybody else.

The Grateful Dead always had their iconography down pat.

Jerry Garcia was one of the original American icons. He played naturally and beautifully.

It's like there's the rest of the world, and then there's America. Part of the reason I would really love continue to making music over here because so much of American music has inspired me, whether it's Jeff Buckley, Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen.

The Grateful Dead, they're my best friends. Their message of hope, peace, love, teamwork, creativity, imagination, celebration, the dance, the vision, the purpose, the passion all of the things I believe in makes me the luckiest Deadhead in the world.

Probably my favorite piece of music, as an album taken as a whole, is Bruce Springsteen's 'Greetings from Asbury Park.' I just think it's incredibly pure. It's a sound that sort of broke new ground, and I think it paved the way for a hundred people that sound very similar.

People like Howlin' Wolf, Bob Dylan, The Rolling Stones, John Lee Hooker, Nina Simone, Captain Beefheart - all of these artists were what I grew up listening to every day of my life. And there's a very healthy music scene in the west country of England, where I grew up.

I grew up in a musical family, but nobody was a professional musician.

I was a kid at the end of the 1960s and in the early 1970s, so a lot of things changed. You had pop music coming up, with David Bowie, you had new television programmes and all these things. I was fascinated.

I grew up listening to a lot of soul music, which has probably informed the way that I sing on my tracks.

I mean people have compared us to like the Grateful Dead and all these like psychedelic sixties bands.

Elvis was a big influence to my music, but Loretta Lynn was, as well.

Growing up, I was inspired by The Beatles and Bob Dylan. Damian Rice was a huge influence for me musically.

I grew up listening to everything. And rock and roll has always been a big, big part of it - as big a part of what I do as any other type of music.

I've got Arabic music in my blood.

I was raised around music.

When Merle and I started out we called our music 'traditional plus,' meaning the traditional music of the Appalachian region plus whatever other styles we were in the mood to play.

It's a rule of 'Deadhead-dom' to claim to hate Donna Godchaux and always say, 'Phil makes the band,' though I think that pronouncement was proved inaccurate after Jerry died.

I grew up with music definitely.

I'm a fan of the Grateful Dead.

I saw Jimi Hendrix - it must have been four times. And he was incomparable, and his legend lives on.

But when I was 12 or 13, I found the acoustic guitar and got into guitar music ultimately, like Black Motorcycle Club, obviously Neil Young, Crosby, Stills and Nash.