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.

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

We all played bad before we played good.

We played it as long as we could play it on that CD and I think it might be 50 minutes, maybe. What you have to do is play a couple of songs and then get off the stage because everything that trails it sounds stupid.

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.

I think that if you keep banging at the door all you need is a little foothold, a little tiny foothold, and then the rest will take care of itself.

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