Max Roach

In classical music, only two people are important, the composer and the conductor. Everybody else is a serf. In jazz, a thing of beauty is created collectively with everybody getting to express an idea. And that reflects what democratic society is – or should be.

Monk encouraged me to emancipate the drums from their subservient role as timekeepers.

The people who really got me off were dealing with the musical potential of their instrument.

Jazz is a democratic musical form. We take our respective instruments and collectively create a thing of beauty.

Jazz music is collective creativity.

You don’t have to be Picasso or Rembrandt to create something. The fun of it, the joy of creating, is way high above anything else to do with the art form.

Darlin… be-bop is the music of the future.

Music must be an innovation.

I always think of music as interior decoration. So, if you have all kinds of music, you are fully decorated!

The challenge to the improvisor is to get permanence into his spontaneity. The challenge to the composer is to get spontaneity into his permanence.

I played in rhumba bands, mickey mouse bands; all kinds of bands.

A movie and a stage show are two entirely different things. A picture, you can do anything you want. Change it, cut out a scene, put in a scene, take a scene out. They don’t do that on stage.

At times in my life the only place I have been happy is when I am on stage.

Django Reinhardt was fantastic. he must have been playing all the time to be that good.

You not only have to know your own instrument, you must know the others and how to back them up at all times. That’s jazz.

Jazz was born out of the whiskey bottle, was raised on marijuana, and will expire on cocaine.

I went back and listened to the first three albums I made and tried to figure out what was special about them, why people keep going back to them. I think it was because I didn’t know what I was doing. I had no idea if they were going to play it on the radio or anything. All I did was write songs, so that’s what I got back to.

Is there a meaning to music? Yes. Can you state in so many words what the meaning is? No.

If the audience doesn’t hear what is going on, is it going on?

I did go through a trial-and-error period where I tried out lots of different guitars, but within a couple of years I was right back to the Les Paul. From that point it’s stayed with me ever since. I have other guitars—and I love a lot of them—but I’m most at home on a Les Paul. It’s interesting: most of the time I would even rather make a Les Paul do the things those other guitars do. From the get-go, the Les Paul spoke to me.