Stephen Malkmus Quotes

I'm trying to make music that I like, and I love hip-hop. At the same time, I love guitar. I love rock and everything.

My policy is not how fast you play, it's not how much you play but it's what you play and where you play it ... play for the commercial side of the music ... the word I still use today is called "simplicity" .. it is so important that you use simplicity in your playing and in your music.

I sit around and play acoustic guitar - usually acoustic, sometimes electric, occasionally piano, but more often guitar, just trying to come up with tunes. Ideas kind of pop into your head.

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

Shut Up and Play your Guitar.

I like [George] Benson because I just like it. I like that kind of style. I don't like the broken up kind of style. I don't like where you play for 16 bars and then break it up into what somebody's version of what birds twittering sounds like, or what the sound of the city is, or what New York sounds like.

There are other tracks that are more reliant upon the beat. Like nobody's going to sit there and play "Harlem Shake" on the guitar!

I like the old school heavy metal bands like AC/DC and Aeromith. I like that type of music. As the director, I tried to influence the type of music the bands in the movie would play.

I've always had to do things my way; I play guitar my way; I've taken myself to the edges of life my way; I've gotten clean my way; And I'm still here. Whether or not I deserve to be is another story.

I don't know how to play the guitar, so having to be on stage in front of people doing something you don't really know how to do, it's terrifying.

Elmore James only knew one lick, but you had the feeling that he meant it.

I don't know what it would be like to actually play guitar. I've toured with a lot of comedians and it's never been like it is for a rock band.

My son youngest son David's favorite song - he plays guitar - and he likes "Devil Pray." That's his favorite.

If you hand me a guitar, I'll play the blues. That's the place I automatically go.

I've always been obsessed with drums. They fascinate me. Any other instrument - nothing. I play acoustic guitar a bit. But it's always been drums first and foremost. I don't reckon on this Jack-of-all-trades thing. I thing that felling is a lot more important than technique. It's all very well doing a triple paradiddle - but who's going to know you've done it? If you play technically you sound like everybody else. It's being original that counts.

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

Out, damned spot! Out, I say!

I've got a few guitars that I like. The trouble with fame and riches is that you have more than one guitar.

I don't like no fancy chords. Just the boogie. The drive. The feeling. A lot of people play fancy but they don't have no style. It's a deep feeling-you just can't stop listening to that sad blues sound. My sound.

I didn't want to make a record that was just guitar and voice, that was just the technology available to me. At the time, I remember thinking, "I am making a Faust album." That didn't translate.

Many were starting to use computerized synthesizers & drum machines to produce an entirely new style of music. It was being punted by the critics that the guitar was old hat; I was reminded of the way my father & his clarinets were written off in the late Fifties.

There's so much music out there & so many possibilities. I like anyone who plays any instrument.

Lenny Breau was a genius - inspired and really loose. I loved how he used the guitar as an extension of his inner freedom, because, obviously, on the outside there were a lot of trainwrecks going on. But when you listen to him play, you hear what kind of guy he really is

If your going to learn to play lead guitar, get an electric guitar .. it doesn't have to be an expensive one .. acoustic guitars aren't good for learning lead, because you can't play up very high on the neck and they take heavier-gauge strings which makes it hard to bend notes

I grew up in a really rural town, Stratford, Ontario, with 30,000 people. There's a big festival thrown in the town. A lot of people travel from all over the world to see it, and growing up, I actually used to busk on the street. I'd play my guitar, sing, and people would throw money in the case.