It was really fun. Well, Bobby was just basically a folk singer. He didn’t play with any bands or anything, like all the rest of us. Just played his guitar and sang his songs.
I’ve always wanted to smash a guitar over someone’s head. You just can’t do that with a piano.
The invention of Bob Dylan with his guitar belongs in its way to the same kind of tradition of something meant to be heard, as the songs of Homer.
As a musician and a guitar player, I can noodle as well as anybody. But from my background as a session musician, I always try to play what is called for by the lyric and listening to the song. As a writer, that’s what I do, too.
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.
My dad was good friends with the Bad Medicine Blues Band – one of the only blues bands in Fargo, as you can imagine! He took me out to see them play when I was 12 years old and I was really inspired by their guitar player, Ted Larsen.
You know, I like playing music and playing guitar, and I like to draw, so I thought I would end up just probably barely making a living, or probably having to have some other job, but being involved in one of those things that I really like to do. But that didn’t work out like that.
The first guitar I ever got was for my 13th birthday.
I had no aspirations to be a musician, but I picked up a guitar for two seconds and haven’t put it down since.
‘Appetite for Destruction’ was the only thing written with lyrics and melody fitting the guitar parts at the same time. After that, I got a barrage of guitar songs that I was supposed to put words to, and I don’t know if that was the best thing for Guns.
I get twitchy if I don’t pick up a guitar or sit at the piano every now and then… I have to do it; I don’t have a choice.
I just go where the guitar takes me.
You can play slide on any guitar, but to be serious about it you have a tough set of strings, otherwise you don’t get the full attack – you can’t dig in.
It is the most delightful thing that ever happens to me, when I hear something coming out of my guitar and out of my mouth that wasn’t there before.
I was a drummer and I played the guitar.
As a kid, I was into music, played guitar in a band. Then I started acting in plays in junior high school and just got lost in the puzzle of acting, the magic of it. I think it was an escape for me.
I’d like to have a beer-holder on my guitar like they have on boats.
I pestered the hell out of everybody I ran into until I could play the guitar well enough to write and sing with it.
It’s one thing to sit at home and write a piece with your guitar, and quite another to have it performed by four people. For me, it’s always trial and error.
I sing a little bit. I got a guitar for my 16th birthday.
My dad got me the same mic I use on everything now – this $200 mic from Guitar Center.
My brother is an excellent songwriter, and I play guitar and drums.
It was my love for the guitar that first got me into music and singing.
I really worked to try and be creative enough on the guitar parts so those who aren’t real educated would know that there was some difficulty in doing it.
In fact, Russell Crowe once phoned me up to see if I wanted to go to a party but I had to bring my guitar and perform ‘Oh Jean.’
So I started to learn guitar right away.
I just rediscovered my guitar.
I started playing with a group of young people when I was 13. I turned professional when I was 15 and I played dance halls, this on bass guitar.
Age isn’t a barrier to playing the bass, and I’ve definitely improved over the years, although maybe I’m not as flash as I once was. But looking back, I can’t imagine a life without a guitar.
I wanted to connect my guitar to human emotions.
There happened to be guitar classes at the college, and there was a guitar teacher there with whom I used to play. In addition, I also would go out into country schools and teach little kids basic guitar and singing a few times a week.
You don’t have to play a whole lot of guitar to be a good blues player. Some people plays too much guitar. Stack it on top of each other the way it don’t – you’re working too fast. Blues not supposed to be played fast. Blues supposed to be played slow. You could kill a man with just one chord.
I can play piano, classical flute, guitar, bass and I’m OK on drums.
God is playing my guitar, I am with God when I play.
I’m on this eternal quest to get the best guitar sound in the world, but my vision of what is ‘the best’ changes every time I go into the studio. Sometimes my goal is to make my guitar jump out, and sometimes I want it to lay back.
Playing the guitar, you kind of lock into a rhythm and a groove, and then it relaxes me to make up lyrics and sing.
My whole career from the early 70s on has been mind-blowing. I didn’t imagine in my life that I would ever be considered a guitar player first of all because I started off as a singer.
Bruce’s band is so different from the Grateful Dead; there’s no lead guitar player, for one thing.
Guitar playing is just something that came to me and is really second nature now.
Heaven to me is percussion and bass, a screaming guitar and a burbling Hammond B-3 organ. It’s a soup I love being immersed in.
James Ralston, my guitar player, has performed with Tina Turner for about 22 years. Jim Hanson on bass has played with Johnny Cash, Rodney Crowell and Bruce Springsteen, and they’re fantastic musicians and amazing singers they get a really cool vocal sound together.
When I’m not touring, I sing at home, either at the piano or I’ll pick up my guitar, singing old Buck Owens songs.
I never set out to write a certain kind of song, I just play my guitar and see if I catch something.
People have always been resistant to change. If you go back to the 17th, 18th century, playing guitar was frowned upon. When rock n’ roll first started, no one took it seriously.
I played a guitar with a file, and a synthesizer.
I keep a guitar around while writing and will improvise music. I do this for several reasons, such as that it’s fun, and sometimes it helps me with the meter.
Listening to my dad playing guitar along to ‘Sleepwalk’ by the Shadows was probably the first time I discovered emotion in music.
I wanted to hear the songs in the way that I had written them, which was very basic. All I wanted was drums and another guitar, and I was just going to sing.
And my daddy could play a harmonica and also the guitar, so I guess I got a little bit from both of ’em, but I think mostly from my mother’s side of the family.
In Nashville, good guitar players are a dime a dozen.
A guitar riff played on a piano doesn’t come close to the purity of it being played on a guitar but I faked it enough to get by.
Jeff and Mike had taken drum lessons at a young age. When the Beatles came out in ’64, we all wanted to play guitar.
If I’m playing with Ozzy it’s just a guitar thing. But with the vocals I feel like I’m studying for the SATs.
I began playing drums when I was seven and guitar when I was fourteen, but it wasn’t until the early ’90s that I took music seriously.
I started playing guitar when I was 12 and probably from that age knew that I wanted to make music and make my own music. Playing with other bands like the Polyphonic Spree and Sufjan Stevens was more like an apprenticeship for me than anything.
Blues music is becoming more and more popular than it ever was. I’m always meeting people on the road that are really young, and are guitar players. male and female.
If you want to be negative about the whole thing you can say all guitar bands after the Beatles were just a waste of time because the Beatles were the best. I think it’s far better to give new records a try.
As far as guitar picking, if I make the same mistakes at the same time every day, people will start calling it a style.
The guitar is a small orchestra. It is polyphonic. Every string is a different color, a different voice.
My guitar is really tempermental. I don’t give up on it though, I’m close to my guitar!
When I was about 12, I had my first paying gig – 8 dollars to play rhythm guitar in a polka band. Pretty soon, I ended up playing in all the bars within driving distance of Abbott, Texas.
Writing used to be my hobby, but now that it’s my job, I have no hobby – except watching TV and laying around the pool reading ‘U.S. Weekly.’ I have tried many hobbies, such as knitting, Pilates, ballet, yoga, and guitar, but none of them have taken.
When I moved to New York to act I was no good at working restaurants – hosting, waiting, bussing, dishwashing – I wasn’t good at any aspect. But I did have a guitar. So I would sing ‘Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard,’ but you would only hear the chorus because the train comes by every 30 seconds.
My real interest in music was the old 78 records and the sound of the music. I loved it and began to realize that one of the main sounds on those old records I loved was the guitar.
That’s pretty much why I went into show business because I wanted to have a guitar and sing unaccompanied, that was like my fantasy of the perfect life.
I mean, give me a guitar, give me a piano, give me a broom and string, I wouldn’t get bored anywhere.
