Melody Gardot

Baby I’m a fool who thinks it’s cool to fall in love!

For me an album cover is like a movie poster. I wanted an image that was pure femininity, which could please a sculptor. I went through a lot of suffering. But managing to stand up nude on stage carrying a guitar is a victory.

For a long time I hated my body, because I was constantly suffering. But now I look at it like an old Mercedes with chrome bumpers. It costs a fortune to repair, it breaks down all the time, you can only use it once a week, the seat leather is starting to crack – but nonetheless it’s mine.

After the accident, I had to reconstruct myself completely. I was taught to see again and to hear with hearing aids. My body had to be completely reprogrammed. And music therapy was at the core of the healing process.

It’s the same for listeners. If you can’t stand your girlfriend, can’t take it anymore, put on your headphones and escape into another world.

I learned to play guitar on my lying back while I was bed-ridden. I only thought to record the songs because sometimes I would I couldn’t remember what I had just done. Eventually I started singing, because I thought if I sang it that would help to remember even more. But I wasn’t trying to sing. And then one day-this is really weird -I just wrote a song. It came out at a rapid rate and I recorded it and I listened back to it and was like ‘Wow, it’s a tune’.

You just sort of have to play the way you are.

Notes are expensive… spend them wisely!

I don’t care for the music when they’re talking bad about women because I think women are God’s greatest gift to the planet – I just like music.

I think I had it in the back of my mind that I wanted to sound like a dry martini.

Musicians need to continue higher learning try to expand the pallet.

I’ll always write music. Whether I release a record, whether I let the public hear it or not, I’m always writing music.

Benny Goodman was one of the big influences as a clarinet player. That’s why I wanted the clarinet.

I always wanted to play the piano, and jazz appealed to me.

You could go out and eat and come back and the note would still be playing.

I wanna hear myself everywhere

Jazz is a complete lifestyle, something that you feel, something that you live.

Jazz musician is a combination entertainer, poet, singer, educator, student, artist, seducer and all-round good fellow.

A guitar is something you can hold and love and it’s never going to bug you. But here’s the secret about the guitar – it’s defiant. It will never let you conquer it. The more you get involved with it, the more you realize how little you know.

For me, the most important thing is the element of chance that is built into a live performance. The very great drawback of recorded sound is the fact that it is always the same. No matter how wonderful a recording is, I know that I couldn’t live with it–even of my own music–with the same nuances forever.

I never had much interest in the piano until I realized that every time I played, a girl would appear on the piano bench to my left and another to my right.