Pop doesn't really look back. It can't. What makes pop work is simplicity.

There is not a sentence in the world that could respectfully do justice to the life and music of Jerry Garcia.

My dad was a musician, it was just what he did, like another guy's dad drives a meat truck. Our house was normal. We weren't taken with the fact our dad was a musician.

I'm not going to play funk licks on a jazz album. That makes no sense.

Pop doesn't really look back. It can't. What makes pop work is simplicity.

One of the things that I loved about listening to Miles Davis is that Miles always had an instinct for which musicians were great for what situations. He could always pick a band, and that was the thing that separated him from everybody else.

The way to learn the language is to rip off other players. As Benny Golson told me, "We all start off sounding like other cats. And gradually, a lick here or there,we start to sound like ourselves. But it takes a long time to do so..." That'swhat he told me, and it worked for me.