Top 20 Bill Bruford Quotes

And we’d drink huge amounts of scotch and coke, which is a ghastly sweet drink… And now people don’t drink nearly as much, for good reason. We’re all a little wiser.

We were from totally different social backgrounds. This is what is very hard for an American to understand, but we could have been five guys from Mars.

Sometimes I had to room with Tony Kaye and that was awful.

If it’s fast, no I don’t have enough piano technique. In that case, it’s probably been done on some kind of synthesizer or sequencer. Then the score can then be printed out and so forth.

I saw it as a challenge to play with Pat and we put hours and hours into it, usually on the bus. The trick was to find something that we both wanted to play within our different styles which would add up to being greater than the sum of its parts.

Close to the Edge, Red, One of a kind, Discipline, Earthworks, The Sound of Surprise, all seem to me to be albums that captured the essence of the intention.

I don’t really remember a whole lot of sex, drugs and rock n’ roll, really.

The piano is kind of my second instrument.

I have been steadily exchanging a rock audience who were nervous about what they had just bought for a jazz audience who not only were happy with their purchase, but are increasingly coming again.

I practice at home, in between phone calls, and have much to do.

I seldom play in a trio, but acoustic music is likely to be lighter, quicker, and quieter.

I didn’t write any music at all, and then, I remember Jon Anderson being very insistent saying that there were two kinds of musicians: the ones who wrote music and the ones who didn’t.

If I was hearing something I couldn’t do, I would figure out how to do it.

The best practice you can get is on the bandstand, but in between gigs I feel I have to stay in shape.

So I have the classic amateur’s technique; I know some very tricky bits and I have large gaping holes.

We used to drink an awful lot of alcohol.

I mean, Chris is, I’m sure, a wonderful guy. But in those days he also very, very late. For all appointments and departures and arrivals and sound checks and anything.

And I like messing around in the engine room of music. Seeing what happens in the rhythm section area.

We all lived in the same house, or most of us did. And as far as I can make out we were confined to the property, because at twenty-four hours’ notice we’d have to do a gig somewhere. So you couldn’t leave the building for more than twelve hours in case a gig came through.

My harmony is passable but is usually made more eloquent at the hands of Steve Hamilton.