Bonnie Raitt Quotes

I like Telecasters because they are so versatile.

Scotty Moore plays one of the first really amazing riffs in rock history on Heartbreak Hotel with Elvis Presley ... it was dangerous, it scared everybodys parents, which was part of the attraction then - as it still is now... it totally blindsided me and made me want to get a guitar and do that.

I invented rock & roll. Jimi Hendrix was my guitar player. James Brown was my vocalist.

Rock music is electronic music, dependent entirely on electronic circuitry and amplification.

When I was 14 years old, I had the opportunity to meet Buddy Holly. I asked him how he got that big, powerful sound out of his guitar amp. He said, 'I blew a speaker and decided not to get it fixed.'

You need the past as a guideline. The history of music is a good basis, but to escape that stuff, that tortuous rulebook, you have to learn it first. It's kind of like religion - once you've written the Bible, that's it, move on.

Without the Fender bass, there'd be no rock n' roll or no Motown. The electric guitar had been waiting 'round since 1939 for a nice partner to come along. It became an electric rhythm section, and that changed everything.

In the '90s, guitar solos were dead.

The Beatles did everything long before anyone else. They weren't afraid to try things and to experiment with a lot of sounds. In 200 years, when you look up 'rock and roll' in the dictionary, it'll have a picture of the Beatles next to it.

Of course the folk guitar is the one I play very often, but I wanted a more electric sound.

Rock and roll ain't nothing but jazz with a hard backbeat.

The electric guitar meant that you could have a band with a drummer and a couple of guitars. And that put a lot of horn players out of work.

... so much of what we do now started in 1954 at Sun Records in Memphis Tennessee ... those guys were inventing that stuff (Rock & Roll) ... you can really tell on some tracks ... they were actually afraid at times of what they were playing. But Rock & Roll definitely didn't come before that time; it started right there

A Strat was a thing of wonder .. when I was 14 or 15, the Shadows were a big influence, and they had the first Strats that came to England. I like to play all kinds of guitars, but I wasn't getting the sound I really wanted until I got a Stratocaster

Where would rock and roll be without feedback?

I'm into rock'n'roll because rock'n'roll, to me, means freedom.

I knew the Beatles songs and how influential they are to other bands, but I'm not a fanatic, so I could look outside the box and observe.

My heart and soul are in the Stratocaster

One of the reasons that the Ramones were so unique and original was that they were four original, unique people.

The only thing I ever really wanted was a Strat .. I started playing guitar after seeing Jimi Hendrix on TV the day he died...then I got Deep Purples' Fireball album which was also a big influence .. I have a collection of more than 200 of them that includes Strats from every year since March 1954 - the first month the Strat was made

The guitar is the coolest instrument in the world.

I drummed in some rock bands. I asked for a drum kit when I was 15 and my parents were kind enough to buy me one and I just started playing with my buddies who played guitar.

Gonna wind it up on my guitar. Gonna make that silver sing.

If we replaced guns with guitars, then the world would be a concert

... you watch Jimi Hendrix literally reinvent the instrument. He was playing from somewhere else. He was really a kind of hybrid, and I can't even begin to imagine where he came from