Brian Setzer Quotes

One of my big inspirations was Chuck Berry, and his playing was always about the rhythm and the lyrics. So I've always been that way in my playing, really.

My primary influences were the best jazz players from the 50's and 60's and later some of the pop people from the same time period along with the better of the well known blues musicians.

I was into playing American music, especially the blues.

There are always generic terms like 'Americana', but there are no boundaries as to where it can go.

Chicago gave me more music than any other city in America.

The Big Band Era is my era. People say, 'Where did you get your style from?' I did the Big Band Era on guitar. That's the best way I could explain it.

I grew up mostly with classical, big band, and a lot of Irish music - I really didn't start listening to rock and roll until I was maybe sixteen.

I like to listen the blues and some classical.

I tended to lean towards the guys who both sang and played, such as Ricky Skaggs, Vince Gill, Steve Wariner... And at the other end of the spectrum, I had Eric Clapton in a rock and blues sense, jazz guys such as Tal Farlow and Les Paul... Then Chet Atkins-type stuff.

My musical taste has always been wide. I started out as a folky before I moved on to blues and soul.

I am a cross between Carl Perkins and Led Zeppelin.

I want to make music that somehow connects to the things that I love in America music.

The blues is the foundation, and it's got to carry the top. The other part of the scene, the rock 'n' roll and the jazz, are the walls of the blues.

Probably my two biggest musical influences were the Everly Brothers and the Beatles, in chronological order. Both of them have had a very simple-sounding musical style that's actually quite complex as far as popular songs are concerned.

I listened to classical guitar and Spanish guitar, as well as jazz guitar players, rock and roll and blues. All of it. I did the same thing with my voice.

I think America concedes that true American music has sprung from the Negro.

There was always a lot of American music in England until, obviously when the Beatles came around, then there was a shift towards English music, but before then American music was the main thing.

I grew up listening to a lot of Ray Charles and '60s rock, thanks to my father, and then my brothers got me in to KISS and whatnot, so I guess that's where I got my first taste for music.

'The Sopranos' wardrobe people would sometimes go over there and just grab stuff off the racks, because B&G has that style that never ages. It's like a '50s or '60s style. It fits me well.

As far as I'm concerned, blues and jazz are the great American contributions to music.

I was growing up at a time when music was growing and changing so fast. I had learned all the big band sounds of the 1940s, Glenn Miller, Tommy Dorsey. But then along came Chuck Berry, Les Paul, Fats Domino and I figured out how to make their music as well.

I always liked jazz. And my people liked the old blues, race records and the doo-wop and all that.

In terms of exploring an identity in the country music world, what I realized very quickly was that there are people who have been performing country music since they were kids. It's very much a part of who they are; very much that jazz and blues are a part of who I am, because I grew up listening to and playing that kind of music.

The other guys in Hootie were into rock. I brought the country influence.

I was listening to a lot of bebop. And to Miles Davis. Everyone thinks I was just in the folk world in 1966, but in 1963 and 1964, I was absorbing enormous amounts of music, from baroque to jazz to blues to Indian music.