Gerald Clayton Quotes

The music always takes us to different places. We'll just continue to play and see what doors open from there.

You could say that everything the musicians have learned and known over the years, all of their technical resources, are in a dialogue with the things they are discovering every time, as if it was the first time.

No matter how old you get, if you can keep the desire to be creative, you're keeping the man-child alive.

I think you have to keep a childlike quality to play music or make a record.

Any teacher in the arts and sciences has to maintain a sense of childlikeness to be truly inventive.

All of my solos were improvised initially - I would go in and get my bearings and see what I came up with.

I came together with younger musicians and tried to pass on my own experiences. In the process, I always tried to maintain my curiosity and spontaneity.

With Zeppelin, I tried to play something different every night in my solos. I'd play for 20 minutes but the longest ever was 30 minutes. It's a long time, but whenI was playing it seemed to fly by.

We always have a take that's 'one for fun', so once you've got what you need, you can do what you like. Something does occasionally pop out of that tree. I'm always open to ideas.

I think music is a big, big wide world, and I am voyager on this particular ship in this sea of wild music, and I'm gonna dive in and find as many fish as I can and catch them all. I love music.

I hope I haven't grown up. The cliche for all artists is that you don't want to lose that child inside. I think when you get sedentary and set in your ways, you can lose a lot of that spontaneity and creativity. I hope I'm holding on to that.

As a kid I was creative.

What I want to happen is to be really creative, and to play something new in the improvisations, every time.

Any talk of 'craft' makes me laugh. My music looks outward; it does not gaze upon itself in admiration. Artisanal is for cheesemakers. I don't know anything about music theory. Every time I approach my guitar, it's like the first time. There's no craft in that.

If you capture the first thought that you have when you're creating, and then play that to people, it's kind of like the listeners are part of that beginning. And that's the most exciting part.

I look at my clarinet sometimes and I think, I wonder what's going to come out of there tonight? You never know.

I was curious and hungry at a young age, and jazz was such a mystery to me, an ocean where you can express yourself in the moment. It represented freedom, it represented wearing wings and going somewhere with music.

Music is still my main thing, but I will explore anything that's interesting and challenging.

I really want to explore every genre that I can.

To me, a song is new every time I sing it.

The reason we started the Driver Era is just 'cause our creative endeavors sort of demanded it.

Being open to the unexpected allows me to bring so much to my craft.

I'm not losing the wonder in playing music.

When I'm at home creating music, I usually wind up laughing. It's always, like, funny - like, what the hell did I just write?

Pushing yourself and digging into something new, that's what being a musician is all about.