Top 45 Joe Bonamassa Quotes

I like to be in the room with players that are better than me. That’s always a good place to be.

The fact that I tour religiously in the spring, religiously in the fall, and do 125 shows – you can set your watch to that. And you could have set your watch to that in 2000 or 1999, and you can set your watch to it in 2012.

Greece is so beautiful and inspiring.

I have a 1969 Grammer Johnny Cash acoustic guitar, and it’s so inspirational.

I’m an acoustic guitar owner – in the sense that I own them, and they sit at my house, and I never play them.

I’ve always been a big fan of taking old songs and completely turning them on their head. Having no adherence to the fine tradition of the original version. Rearranging them and taking a different approach to them.

A great solo is one that’s so frail that it actually teeters on the edge of falling apart, but doesn’t.

I dislike all those cookie-cutter Nashville songs. You know the ones: about tight jeans and pick-up trucks.

British blues was my favorite music, and it still is.

Whenever I hear my playing, I can’t detach from my influences: there’s my Jeff Beck, there’s the Clapton bit, the Eric Johnson bit, the Birelli Lagrene bit, the Billy Gibbons.

Who’s to say a blues man can’t play rock and roll?

If you have a good riff with a vocal as well, then it becomes a devastating song. That’s why people love riff-rock: it’s the ultimate air guitar music.

My first memory of guitar was seeing my father play one.

Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck made me an Anglophile. I listened to English and Irish artists as a kid, and they were way louder, heavier, and faster than the traditional blues that I was listening to.

When you go into a situation, and you’re honest and straight-up about something, you put all your cards on the table.

I’m always looking for something new to do.

I think what I do really well is that I can ‘chameleon’ myself into many styles at a very fast pace, sometimes in the same verse of a song.

When you think blues, you think BB King. Even a young kid can look at a picture of BB King and say, ‘the blues.’ The man is more than a musician. He’s a monument.

One of these days, when I get tired of it all, I’ll keep six guitars and the amps I’m using, and I’ll have a big old auction for charity.

The first thing you realise very quickly when you decide to do an acoustic version of an electric song is your solo either becomes either very truncated, very different, or non-existent, because even if you play a clean solo, it’s different with the Kryptonite… with the acoustic.

As far as actual playing, Clapton – by far – is my biggest influence, and you can tuck Jeff Beck underneath that.

If we got into a time machine and went back to the 1700s, classical and baroque music would have been the equivalent of Beyonce and Jay-Z.

When you’ve done so many records in 20 years like I have, you’re going to have ebbs and flows and go through peaks and valleys.

Basically, 2011 was the hardest year on the road for me because I did a spring tour and a fall tour plus nine weeks in the summer, and I was pretty worse for wear by the time I got home in December. I know I was only 34, but that was a tough lap.

I feel like I always learn from somebody who can do something better than I can.

I’ve really gotten over pedals. I can’t keep up with this craze of boutique pedals that make you sound like everything but your guitar. I can’t get my head around it.

The blues, the way it’s interpreted, is always a product of your environment, and so it’s almost like food. You know, it’s like you use the ingredients, and you use your life experiences that you have.

I used to watch MTV when they played music, and discovered Robert Cray, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Jeff Healey.

John Mayall doesn’t get enough credit. He’s not in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, which is a tragedy.

I’ve always been a fan of the five-speed transmission – on anything.

That’s the thing about the blues: It’s one thing to hit a note on a guitar. To make it matter is something else altogether.

I play acoustic when I need to play acoustic, and I say I’m probably a better acoustic player than I am electric.

I’ve never been universally loved from the beginning.

If I’m soloing, I usually try to start with a theme, which will often stem from the blues.

You often see lifestyle over substance in L.A. Some rock stars dress up like they’re going to play a gig when they’re just going to the 7-Eleven store on a Tuesday night.

Jimi Hendrix is a classic example of a player in which everything he did, it was all in his hands.

I am the poster boy for brick-by-brick foundation building. Play a club. Put on a good show for 35 people. Come back. Build your market. Have people talk about you.

I think great music sells records, and I also think, do you want to be a reality star, or someone that actually has credibility? Because you can’t have both.

Being a niche kind of artist, you’re not going to make a lot of friends in the traditional music biz.

There was a rumour that I was buying Gibson. It circulated around the Internet… And I just go, ‘How well off do you think I am?’ I play blues-rock for a living. It’s like a vow of poverty.

I don’t have any legato skills; I could never figure out how to roll the notes off.

Everything Paul Kossoff did came from his fingers and went right into the amp. He was his own effects unit.

If I feel like things are getting into a routine, I want them to be different. I need to keep improving and keep moving forward.

I’m not sure when I first heard about Beth Hart. I do remember seeing her on various TV shows. I think I’d seen her on ‘Conan O’Brien’ or whatever. And it seemed that whenever we’d tour Europe, our paths would cross.

When you play a gig in Poland or Australia, or you play a gig in Toledo, they all clap at the same parts of the show. They’re clapping for the solos in the exact same way.