George Gershwin

Life is a lot like jazz. It’s best when you improvise.

When you want ’em you can’t get ’em, when you’ve got ’em, you don’t want ’em.

Jazz is one of the best things that you can find in your life, it can always be your friend.

My neighbors always listen to very hip Jazz… whether they like it or not.

First of all, I never strive for identity. That’s something that just has happened automatically as a result, I think, of just putting things together, tearing things apart and putting it together my own way, and somehow I guess the individual comes through eventually.

Composing is a mindset, a part of who I am.

You have to be a bastard to make it, and that’s a fact. And the Beatles are the biggest bastards on earth.

This will be our reply to violence: to make music more intensely, more beautifully, more devotedly than ever before.

10% of musicians make 90% of the money, while the remaining 90% of musicians make the 10% that’s left.

The spirit of Jazz is the spirit of openness.

Les is an old friend of mine. He gave me this special white Les Paul – he wound the pickups himself – for my birthday, first time I met him. I play everything from heavy metal to blues to jazz on it. He just hit it right on the head when he designed the Les Paul. I like it better than most girlfriends I’ve had. The godfather of rock ‘n’ roll, I call him. Without him, none of us would have a job.

In Europe they look upon jazz as art. In America it’s a diversion. Somebody opens a restaurant and installs another band off to the side. People don’t listen.

And if I had a preference, it would be to be able to not be in the studio until 4 in the morning.

Some people feel the rain. Others just get wet.

Once I could play what I heard inside me, that’s when I was born.

I kind of hate the fact that people are always trying to put you into a category. I hate walls, and I hate boundaries. I don’t like that. I listen to everything.

I have won several prizes as the world’s slowest alto player and a special award in 1961 for quietness.

I thought Eric Clapton was good. He still is. Not only is he good – he’s rock’s #1 guitarist, and he plays blues better than most of us.