Quotes About Guitar

After months of playing air guitar to 'Free Bird', what really got me into guitar was watching a documentary about Jimi Hendrix and picking up the Woodstock soundtrack. Listening to his version of 'Star Spangled Banner' and 'Purple Haze.' My brother played acoustic guitar and, idolising him, I thought, 'I'm going to get a guitar.'

I grew up with rock and pop music from the 70s and 80s. I had to play guitar in school - it was a music college and we had to take instrument classes there - so I think guitar playing and guitar sounds have always been an influence.

I play piano and guitar. Acoustic guitar. I tried studying classical guitar when I was 16 but it got really hard. I could never play a lead to save my life.

The guitar is a means of expressing music, When you get into the emotional side of it, then it's not the guitar that matters so much as the music itself. But the guitar is the vehicle I use. It's how I express myself. As for the emotional side, music takes up where language leaves off. To try and verbalize what music says, emotionally and spiritually, is futile. Let me put it this way, Louis Armstrong once said if you've got to ask, you'll never know.

I bought one of those Learn How to Play Guitar Chords By Yourself and it shows you the diagram where to put your hands and I took that in my room, sat with my singles and learned how to play guitar.

You think back to Tele players, and James Burton was the one who started it all. He inspired Roy Nichols (guitar for Merle Haggard & the Strangers), Don Rich (guitar for Buck Owens & the Buckaroos), and guys like that to push the envelope and expand on that sound... I really identify with that kind of thinking ... those guys to me are the reason why any of us do this.

I suppose my little Martin acoustic guitar is quickly becoming a prize possession. It's a lovely guitar. I bought it at the Cambridge Folk Festival in 2001 before I had cleaned up.

Jimi Hendrix is the greatest guitar player in the world... a guy who mastered that instrument. It was talking when he played. And when he did a solo, he made the guitar cry - or made it sound like it was coming from the devil's amplifier.

My dad started teaching me how to play guitar when I was 13 years old. When he'd go to work, he'd map out guitar cords on a piece of notebook paper. I'd sit down and look at it every day and practice while he was gone.

I play the guitar. I taught myself how to play the guitar, which was a bad decision... because I didn't know how to play it, so I was a shitty teacher. I would never have went to me.

When I was a kid in Eugene, Oregon, there was this fantastic guitar player who went out on the tables, chairs, out in the audience and played. So I started taking my guitar in the audience. I tripped, fell backwards and ripped my pants.

The music I'm playing now is the music I always imagined myself playing when I was a kid. It's been nice to use my instrument a bit more - play the guitar in a more fun way with riffs and stuff like that - rather than just propping up a whole song with a guitar and my vocals. There's so much more energy in the crowd as well; they've been bouncing around and having fun, and it's nice to feel like you're a part of something in a room rather than just performing for a crowd.

One of the reasons I took up the guitar was I didn't want to speak to anybody. I really felt uncomfortable speaking to people, so I took the guitar up so I could hide behind it. I'm not comfortable explaining things, because my brain doesn't work that way.

I wanted to be an actor, an astrologer, an astronaut; a lot of different things were going through my mind. But I also wanted to play guitar. I mentioned to my parents that I wanted an electric guitar for Christmas. They got me one! I sat there all Christmas morning making a lot of loud horrible noise.

I fool around with guitar and I can fool around on piano. I don't really play either instrument although I can play a couple of songs on guitar. You don't really need to be able to play to compose. There are many composers and arrangers who work out of their heads.

If a guitar is too easy for me to play, it makes me too laid back. I like to battle with my guitar.

The voices on the record, that was trying to treat my voice like guitar players treat guitar tones.

I wanted to come back to the guitar after three albums and almost 10 years. I started to miss this instrument and I wanted to come back to the guitar.

Listening to as many guitar solos as possible is the best method for someone in the early stages. But saxophone solos can be helpful. They're interesting because they are all single notes, and therefore can be repeated on the guitar. If you can copy a sax solo you're playing very well, because the average saxophonist can play much better than the average guitarist.

I think guitar-wise, Eric Clapton was a big influence on me. I got to spend time around him. He's kind of strange, mysterious, serious and he always has played such hot guitar.

My mother was a very beautiful lady, I thought. She was very good to me. I guess - she died when I was nine and a half, but if she had lived I probably wouldn't be trying to play guitar. She wanted me to be known, but as something else. Not a guitar player.

Another guitar player who had a tremendous influence on my life was Howard Roberts ... I'd listened to a lot of Tal Farlow, Johnny Smith and Kenny Burrell, and I was certainly into those guys, but I was awestruck at the intensity and fire in Howards' guitar playing... for me, it became a roadmap.

I write songs on guitar and that's about how good of a guitar player I am. I can write songs on it.

I loved rock and roll when that came in, Bill Haley, Little Richard, Fats Domino, Buddy Holly, Elvis Presley, all those great records. So I begged my mom and dad for a guitar, which eventually they did get me for Christmas, but it went out of tune very quickly, and it hurt my fingers.

It's a good feeling to be at a place where you know who you are as an artist. I didn't know back then, I just wanted to give my family a better life and myself. I wanted to sing, but I didn't know as an artist who I wanted to be and because of all those experiences, it helped shape me into who I am and what I've now realized and what it is that brings me happiness which is when I pick up the guitar and do records.

I used to play the drums. When I was 11 I got my first professional job, I played drums in a cabary and played Elvis and stuff, I used to play left handed actually. Then I started to pick up the guitar when I was around 15, but I played the drums for a long time.

Women are my hobby... every man needs something to keep his hands busy, and I don't have a guitar like Eddie and Michael, or some drums to bash like Alex, so I have to find some friends.

Guitar is easy, all it takes is 5 fingers, 6 strings and 1 a**hole

So I'll set a cycle in motion and pop it into record and I'll lay down a drum pattern, a bass line, a keyboard and guitar part, and once the groove is going I launch into the song and sing my song over the top.

I think Clapton is brilliant. He's the only one who moved me. The only one who made me want to play the guitar.

As a kid I used to pretend I was John Denver, of all people, and play the guitar and sing Take Me Home, Country Roads.

Barney Kessel is definitely the best guitar player in this world, or any other world.

I wasn't a jock in school, and by the 10th grade, when I was in boarding school I was carrying water buckets for the girls' hockey team. I was the kid with long hair and glasses and acne trying to learn how to play guitar and piano in the music center. I was not an athlete past the age of 13 or 14 when they start throwing the ball really fast.

I was immediately taken with Geoff Muldaur's rich soulful voice, masterful phrasing and guitar playing when I first heard him.

Everyone gets frustrated and aggressive, and I'd sooner take my aggression out on a guitar than on a person.

You know, once you've had that guitar up so loud on the stage, where you can lean back and volume will stop you from falling backward, that's a hard drug to kick.

I'm hungry for purpose. I'm looking for still that reason that I bought a guitar and started a band, to fulfill a purpose, to manifest destiny as to who I am and why I am the way I am, and what I do. I think it's still about the music, the song and the story.

If you can't play guitar and sing in Nashville, you might as well just be a construction worker.

I want every girl in the world to pick up a guitar and start screaming.

In Kid A and Amnesiac, the guitar becomes one more texture, difficult to separate from other textures.

I'm still constantly learning and that's what keeps me excited about the guitar.

I didn't want to get attached to one guitar; I didn't want to have an instrument that was irreplaceable.

May was so great to work with, he even took me over to Japan for some dates. It blew me away when he let me play his guitar on stage with him.

My grandfather gave me my first guitar, an old acoustic with palm trees and dancing girls painted on it

I never met a politician who didn't want to be a guitar player in a rock band. I've got the opportunity to say what I believe in.

Of course, it is very important to be sober when you take an exam. Many worthwhile careers in the street-cleansing, fruit-picking and subway-guitar-playing industries have been founded on a lack of understanding of this simple fact.

When it is possible that people don't understand my English, I take my guitar and speak with my music!

Where I grew up, I could be a punk rocker and a jock. But in college, it became apparent that those two worlds didn't mix. When I brought my guitar back to school after Thanksgiving break, a friend handed me his bass and said, 'Listen to the Ramones.'