Ian Gillan Quotes

I feel like I'm just learning how to play the guitar. I mean, really learning to play the guitar.

When I picked up guitar, it wasn't like, 'OK, I'm going to be Kenny Chesney.' It was like, 'I want to play a chord,' and then it was like, 'I want to play another one, then play a song, then sing while playing the song.'

You never learn everything on that guitar neck.

It was more fun trying to figure out I Want To Hold Your Hand than to take lessons. By this time I knew basic chords.

I just want to be a better guitar player, really.

I find it quite easy to play chords, and, you know, that was all I ever did. I never wanted to be a lead guitarist.

I started playing when I was about 13, mainly because Dad had guitars lying around the house. My dad taught me my first three chords, and I taught myself from there.

I played the Spanish guitar for eight years, like flamenco.

When I was 12 or 13, my dad taught me a couple of different chords, and once I learned chords, I never learned to read music, but I learned tablature, like a lot of kids do, and I learned songs that had the chords I knew. It took me a long time to understand the upstroke of picking and strumming, but once I did, it all fell into place.

All I'm trying to do is simply play guitar and elicit this creativity from the instrument.

The only one I can play like is Johnny Ramone. I would love to be able to play like other great guitarists, but my mind doesn't work like that.

When I got my first guitar, I played along with everything I heard that had guitar in it, like the Ramones, Nirvana and Sublime, as well as whatever hip-hop and R&B stuff was on the radio.

I taught myself how to play guitar - pretty badly, but I knew enough about music to start to figure it out.

As a youngster, I used to try to pick up any bits of wisdom about the guitar I could. It's not like now where you have books and books about every aspect of anything. Any little pearl of wisdom was welcome back then.

If you play more than two chords, you're showing off.

I learned how to play guitar by playing along to Jane's Addiction records and Smashing Pumpkins records, things you can totally hear if you listen to my guitar.

I taught myself how to play the guitar. I never studied music.

I started playing guitar back in '56. I was a teenager, and guitars had just come in, and I had a thing for it and got one. Started learning lead breaks from songs, because that was the easiest thing to do at the time. I had the guitar for two years before I learned any chords. Really.

We always had a guitar at home, but it wasn't until I was 14 when I picked it up myself when my father handed me these sheets of music of the Beatles and some other classics. That's where I learned all the chords and learned how to play and sing at the same time.

I bought one of those Learn How to Play Guitar Chords By Yourself and it shows you the diagram where to put your hands and I took that in my room, sat with my singles and learned how to play guitar.

In high school, I decided I wanted to learn guitar, so I picked it up and starting teaching myself some basic chords and started playing with friends. Guitar inherently lends itself to be guitar music, especially when you're not good at guitar.

I noticed a lot of guitar players neglected the rhythm part of rhythm guitar and decided I would try to focus in that. As my skill and knowledge of the instrument grew, I found lead started to come naturally. Sometimes I play guitar like a frustrated drummer. Ha ha!

I've always thought that the act of playing the guitar was the act of trying to make a point of playing the guitar.

When I was 11 years old, I started playing guitar.

Initially, I just used the guitar as a prop. I'd pose with it in front of a mirror in my Kiss makeup when I was skipping school. Then I figured out how to play the main riff to Deep Purple's 'Smoke on the Water' on just the E string. Next, my old man showed me how to play barre chords, and that's when things started getting really heavy.