Guitarist Quotes

I'm not a guitarist as far as a technician goes, I just pick it up and play it. Technique doesn't come into it.

Going onstage without my primary instrument is like being a guitarist and going up onstage with no guitar waiting for you. What do you do? That's why performance is painful for me, because I feel like I am always in a strange place with a bit of a handicap.

I never felt I had enough personal style to pursue being just a guitarist.

If I had known I would influence so many guitarists, I would have practiced more.

I dont like to waste notes, not even one. I like to put the right note in the right place, and my influences have always been those kinds of players. Keith Richards comes to mind, and I really like Nils Lofgrens soloing, because hes so melodic. I love John Lennons rhythm playing, and George Harrison was an incredible guitarist.

You have to listen to what someone is doing and help them get to where they want to go, musically speaking. I play a supporting role if someone else is soloing, and a guitarist will do the same for me while I am soloing.

I wanted to be the greatest woman guitarist alive. I had fantasies about being a female Jimi Hendrix.

I think guitarists are really over-admired and over-revered.

Certainly being proficient in an instrument does have its problems. Because the better you get, the more you just start sounding like an ordinary guitarist. There are certainly guitarists that transcend that and do really find their sound and all that sort of stuff.

One hundred guitarists making lots of noise would not be something you'd want to listen to.

All the great guitarists have a spirit-a way they play and don't play.

I don't think about what other people expect or anything. I mean, I sit and worrying so much about what I'M thinking, I'd go NUTS if I sat around worrying about other people.

Over the years I hope I've become more of a musican and less of a guitarist.

Learn the lick, but learn FROM the lick.

If you're into what you're playing, that's the most important thing.

The song tells me what to play.

If you assume you haven't learned anything yet, there's no reason your playing can't stay dynamic all your life.

If you're a guitarist, you should not be intimidated by using your instrument as a synthesizer, but you shouldn't feel that you have to own one, either.

I guess anybody who plays can say that they play guitar, but if you want to be a guitarist, you've got to practice all the time and you've got to get good at it. It's more than just having one and playing it.

I'm not a really good classical guitarist by any means, but what I learned from this is a way of working very slowly on solo pieces and I enjoyed working on these pieces of John's. They were not written for solo guitar but a lot of them were easy to adapt.

... don't be afraid to screw up !... one of the key issues to learning is making mistakes ... if you're not making mistakes, you're probably not having a very good time

Sometimes, I must admit, I'd like to have a second guitarist onstage with me, but it wouldn't look right. I'd like to play for another 20 years, but I don't know... I just can't see it happening. I don't know why. It's a certain foreboding... a funny feeling... vultures.

Most of my favourite guitarists are self-taught, because in a way there's less of a reverence for the instrument itself, so you end up finding and inventing however you want to play it.

Every guitarist I would cross paths with would tell me that I should have a flashy guitar, whatever the latest fashion model was, and I used to say, 'Why? Mine works, doesn't it? It's a piece of wood and six strings, and it works.'

Nathan McEuen's light is shining bright. A fine singer, guitarist and an excellent songwriter. There is hope on the horizon.

Jeff Beck is my idol .. sometimes he finds notes that I just do not have on my guitar. Frank Zappa's another one .. I loved Frank Zappa ... I do think Van Halen reinvented the guitar ... he's an excellent musician, a shrewd guitarist and as a person he's wonderful.

The great British blues guitarists of the Sixties - people like Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, Jimmy Page and Peter Green - could play like virtuosos, but they also understood the importance of energy and intensity

Eric Clapton is my dream guitarist.

Every improv must be song specific. It has to grow organically out of the particular elements involved or it's just glib self-expression. I hate when I feel like I'm the lead guitarist in a rock band. We all gotta be going somewhere strong together, you know?

But I say these things in an objective dispassionate manner because, you know, and I can't explain why, but being one of the greatest guitarists in the world simply is not very important to me.

When you strip it all away, Jerry Garcia (former Grateful Dead guitarist) destroyed his life on drugs. And yet hes being honored, like some godlike figure. Our priorities are out of whack, folks.

It's crazy how every guitarist is their own worst critic in many ways.

One day, I remember it was in television. I was a fan of the Rolling Stones. One of the members, the guitarist, had died from an overdose of drugs. I cried tears – my model had died. After this, an exciting new group, the Radha Krishna Temple, came on and sang the Hare Krishna mantra. I immediately felt deep solace.

I'm sure every pattern has been covered, but it's nice to think you might dwell on some that other people don't.

The composers hated me. The singers detested me. The guitarists were terrified by me.

Chord substitution isn't some mysterious religious sect.

A guitarist or a drummer can get a cold and still play; I get a cold and sound like a wet mitten trying to sing you a love song. Charming.

It's part of our nature. As much as I love (brother and guitarist Eddie), if you put us in a room with no one else for 15 minutes, we'd be at each other's throats.

P.I.L. has been a favorite of mine since high school especially there metal box album. The guitarist Keith Levine gets some of the best sounds ever to come out of a guitar. The songs are really free form and experimental and have a heavy dub influence.

Drummers haven't managed to develop their individuality quite as well as guitarists have. We can be so focused on the nuts and bolts that we overlook the importance of individuality - the broader picture, if you will.

Of all the early breakthrough rock and roll artists, none is more important to the development of the music than Chuck Berry. He is its greatest songwriter, the main shaper of its instrumental voice, one of its greatest guitarists, and one of its greatest performers.

An uninhibited, Chuck Berry devotee but experimented with and broke a lot of ground on feedback techniques and solid variations in tonal and dissonant utilizations. I'm one of the best guitarists in the world, and I play with great emotion.

To be creative and spontaneous, you have to live with imperfection.

I started playing bass for the same reason everyone else does – I’m a lousy guitarist.

I was training to be a lawyer... I was president of the law society at Glasgow University, and my bass guitarist was my secretary of my law society; the lead guitarist and writer worked at the law firm that I worked.

I think a lot of modern day guitarists start off playing like Eddie van Halen, and they don't take the time to learn the basics.

I'm just a guitarist in a kick-ass rock and roll band. What more could I ask for?

It's definitely true that Stevie Ray Vaughan is one of my all-time favorite guitarists.

Cheers to the albums written fortunes earned lives touched in the millions and generations defined by one lonely person placing an ad in the back of a free paper seeking a guitarist, bassist, and drummer just looking to jam.

I think Ace is a great guitarist, and with the four original members of KISS, there's a magic and chemistry that you just can't touch.