Joe Bonamassa Quotes

I started doing up-and-down strumming, basically to keep time and to play fast. As time went on, I started realizing other guitar players couldn't do it. I always went against the grain.

Music's been around a long time, and there's going to be music long after Ray Charles is dead. I just want to make my mark, leave something musically good behind. If it's a big record, that's the frosting on the cake, but music's the main meal.

We're not trying to change the world; just music.

Guitar solos bore the hell out of me. Only a few guitarists interest me, and it's not about the solos they play, it's about the grooves they create.

Today each composer is not only involved in aesthetics, but he's actually trying to create his own language.

These days I can really get the strings to snap if I want.

There was nobody at the time who was playing slide guitar like Johnny, and nobody, or no white guys at least, that was playing country blues like that on the acoustic guitar. And it was at that point that I realized what Johnny had to offer.

In my opinion I do not think I am a better guitarist than Ace, I honestly think we're both different, and we both brought something unique to the musical.

I wanted to develop a guitar style where phrases and lines get there just in the nick of time, like with Curtis Mayfield and Steve Cropper. Subtleties mean so much, and there is a stunning beauty in them.

Experimenting with different sounds is great, but when it comes down to it, you're still playing a guitar.

I think no matter what kind of music you play, there will be moments when you feel like it's all been done before.

I have tried, in all the ways I can, to make timeless music.

I'm a huge stadium rock fan, but I'm also a fan of everything from Massive Attack to Peter Gabriel, U2, the Police, Radiohead, and Coldplay. I've realized that I love all forms of music and get excited when any artist goes crazy and creates something that is an experience.

They have all different names for music. I think the music I'm going to change the style with is going to be really, really big-years and years after I'm gone.

I wanted to be able to play guitar. I wanted to be able to make music hurt.

And I've also come to the conclusion that, as far as guitar solos and things like that are concerned, it's more important to complement the music rather than take away from it.

I think its so cool that you can pick up the guitar and create something that didn't exist 5 minutes ago. You can write something that no ones ever heard before. You have music at your fingertips.

The development of new instrumental and vocal idioms has been one of the remarkable phenomena of recent music.

Beethoven's importance in music has been principally defined by the revolutionary nature of his compositions. He freed music from hitherto prevailing conventions of harmony and structure.

For me, theory has always opened things up to where I can walk into a room and just by hearing something I know exactly where to go on the guitar. I have a better time playing because I have a variety of colors to bring to the table.

Guitar players in the nineties seem to be reacting against the technique oriented eighties.

As a songwriter, you tend to develop your own style, your own technique, based around what it is you're trying to write and perform, in terms of your own music. So a way of evolving a guitar style as a songwriter is much easier, I think, than developing a true style of your own just from listening to music or playing other people's music.

As a guitar player, it's harder for me to impress somebody than it is to write a song that they like.

Greg Ginn was certainly a huge influence on my guitar playing. I put him up there with people like Eddie Van Halen. Eddie Van Halen changed everything; I don't necessarily like everything he did, but he definitely changed everything.

You have got to make new music, that is the way that I look at it anyway.