Piano Influence Quotes

People don't tend to notice, but in the past 10 years especially there's been a lot of growth in how I write songs and what goes into them. You can listen to Mountain Goats from 1991 to 2007 and never hear a seventh chord. In 2007 or 2008, I started working on the piano to grow as a songwriter. I started throwing major sevens in and sixes and more interesting stuff.

Most pianists listen to about four or five different piano players before they call it quits and say, 'Okay, I've got my thing together.' Herbie Hancock, McCoy Tyner, Bill Evans, Keith Jarrett and maybe Chick Corea. Or maybe before that, Oscar Peterson.

The music I listened to when I was a kid was Sonny Boy Williams and Pinetop Perkins. He was the one who had the most influence on my playing. I saw him through a window playing piano and I thought it was unbelievable somebody could move their fingers that fast. And this is how I got interested in piano.

I was really interested in piano and sort of discovered that I was a writer when I was about 13 and started writing. And it was my secret thing and my passion.

I never actually had a guitar lesson. I taught myself the guitar from piano exercise books, which led me to have a pretty good technique on the guitar and allowed me to find different ways to do things.

I grew up with the British-Chicago crossover of house music with a lot of pianos and very heavy bass lines, but what I love about house is you can mix it up a bit.

Lindsey [Buckingham] and I went up to Aspen and we went to somebody's incredible house and they had a piano and I had my guitar with me and I went in their living room, looking out over the incredible Aspen sky and I wrote 'Landslide.'

Bud Powell's probably the biggest influence on my piano playing.