Paul Bley Quotes

I think we've all had enough of Coltrane saxophonists. There's a case of someone ruining a generation of saxophonists, as Louis Armstrong may have ruined a generation of trumpeters.

Now as jazz musicians we're saying for this society, you can free up your imagination. You can proceed in an area without much information and you can function in an area without much information.

I think all record companies should be run by a musician. Just as you wouldn't trust your health to an electrician.

When I arrived in New York I was definitely the worst player in town! It was just a measure of how far I had to go. It took years, while I was at Juilliard I worked different weekends with different people.

Ornette Coleman wasn't sure whether he was going to continue with Charlie Haden-Charlie had some personal problems. I said "You've got to be kidding! There's no one on the globe who will be able to accompany you" and no one ever did. [Scott LaFaro] was playing atonally and certainly Ornette was not an atonal player. Jimmy Garrison was a tonal player. He wasn't even polytonal or atonal.

I anticipated all the changes in jazz because they were all problematical things, that I was dealing with myself. In New York in the late '50s, there were a lot of experiments being made on how to avoid playing popular standards and how to get improvising out of those constricting formats.

Adam Berenson knows how to compose, organize an ensemble, do musical research, play solo and trio piano, write for musical journals, and enlist others to his cause. A very fine musician.

The Beatles came and everybody forgot about everything else. That was a friendly, together, hip interpersonal music, introducing electric sustain, and it captured the imagination of everybody. So improvising, even though it was in a very rich period in terms of impact on the public, the '6Os were very hard times on players financially.