Top 25 Jamie Cullum Quotes

I worship pianos like they are prize diamonds, and I never willfully do damage to them. But I grew up playing guitars, and you treat a guitar like a best friend or a little brother or a lover you have a tempestuous relationship with.

I can’t get enough of this guy called Baths. He’s a total L.A. dude and really young as well. It’s super-electronic, but with almost Hall & Oates-style songwriting. Without the context of the production, it could be super-cheesy, but it has amazing harmonies.

I used to drum on the table at school. I think a handful of my school reports say that they thought I might have some kind of ADD because I was making sounds. I was far from being an ADD child. I was actually quite quiet and well-behaved. But I used to drum on things.

In my bachelor days, I had a small upright piano in my kitchen. It cost £10 from eBay plus £70 delivery. It was because I’d seen an old photo of Tom Waits – with dirty dishes, empty bottles, a hot plate, a coffee machine and a piano strewn with lyric sheets – and fallen in love with it.

I sit around for ages waiting for inspiration. Then when I get an idea, I want to go with it and get something as quickly as possible. It’s like catching a fly in a bottle. I’ll play with drums for a bit, then the piano for a bit, play the guitar.

Most people in the U.K. discovered me playing a standard on Parkinson. In America, it was on VH1 singing an original called ‘All At Sea,’ which is a contemporary pop song. So the people that know me there tend to think of me in the singer/songwriter category.

My grandfather, Harry, died when my dad was in his early 20s, so I never met him. Amazingly, he was 6ft tall. That gene definitely never filtered down to me!

I was thinking of applying to the ‘Guardian’ for a job after university. Yeah, I wanted to be one of the people who writes stories in G2.

A studio allows you to indulge your untidiness and your penchant for toys and curiosities that really wouldn’t work in a grown-up house.

My pure love is playing music.

My only ambition is to grow as a musician.

Oh, I was a real Nirvana kid. I got into jazz because I listened to a lot of metal, Megadeth and that, and those guys play really fast and are virtuosos. I wanted to learn more about it, and I discovered that a lot of jazz guys played really fast, too.

Having kids sets a bomb off in your life. It really makes you examine who you are, what you believe in and what you want to be. And that is magical for creativity.

I lived my twenties on the road, in all different countries experiencing this momentum of a career which was taking off in its own way.

As I grow older and meet more and more people, I realise how lucky I am to have had a stable family environment. Both my parents had loving families but unstable upbringings, so they wanted us to have a more stable situation.

I’m no longer a shoeaholic, but I used to be. I used to spend all my time on tour either buying records or shoes.

I never use a piano stool. I always use a drum stool. Because I feel that when you’re down there, you’re playing in that way you’re supposed to. I like to be above it.

I have a piano in my kitchen. I read a great biography about Tom Waits that said that he had a piano in his kitchen; he had a grand piano in his kitchen. And I thought, ‘Well, if Tom Waits has one, then I must.’

I’ve worn some particularly baggy jeans and cowboys boot combinations after coming back from Austin, Texas. This was ill-advised.

When I was at school, I wanted to play a piano, and they said, ‘No, that’s for the classical students.’ There’s always been this air around pianos, which can very often discourage a young person from having a go.

A lot of people are surprised by my love of heavy metal. I fell in love with heavy metal almost before any other genre. One of the first concerts I went to was a Donnington Monsters Of Rock concert.

People often say that having a family makes you make safer choices. It’s been the total opposite for me. It’s really made me want to make bolder choices.

My grandmother on my father’s side, a nightclub singer, was a Jewish refugee from Prussia who ended up in Jerusalem, where she met my grandfather – a British army officer. I remember as a child having bowls of chicken soup made by her. There were lots of interesting components, like feet and necks.

One of the beautiful things about having kids is I had no idea how much it will make you look into yourself and who you are and what you believe in and what your past was like and all that kind of stuff. I think it’s made me really look at life in a much more intense way.

The last time I went to a festival without a hat, two things happened. One: I got sunstroke. Secondly, I had to buy what can only be described as a Jamiroquai hat, which was sartorially incorrect – I’m saying that as a Jamiroquai fan. That was a disaster. I looked like a small clown.