Pat Metheny

It is Jazz’s very nature to change, to develop and adapt to the circumstances of its environment.

I don’t worry too much about the fundamentalist principles that are in almost any discussion about Jazz.

Jazz is not something that can be defined through blunt instruments. It is much more poetic than that.

People sometimes say it takes a long time to become a Jazz fan, but for me it took about five seconds.

The beauty of Jazz is that it’s malleable. People address it to suit their own personalities.

Listening is the key to everything good in music.

When I sing, trouble can sit right on my shoulder and I don’t even notice.

I started playing piano when I was 6. And I knew that wanted to be involved in that form of expression, whether it was through music, or acting, or dancing, or painting, or writing.

I’ve been a jazz artist playing pop and R&B my entire career.

I’ve tried all my life to avoid copying. If I can’t be myself, there’s no point being in Jazz.

Everybody did something. It was very entertaining. We had a lot of fun. Lot of fun. And there was no segregation, that I could see. I never saw any.

You can cage the singer but not the song.

Jazz is an art that makes a person completely naked.

I was walking down the street, and I saw a sewer digger on his lunch hour open his lunch pail, dig out a harmonica, knock out the cracker crumbs, and play a bunch of tunes on it. I was fascinated by that harmonica, so I stared the guy out of it. I just stared at him. He said, ‘Here, kid, take it. Get out of here.’

Music that is born complex is not inherently better or worse than music that is born simple.

Hipness is what it is. But sometimes hipness is what it ain’t.

Anything I do has to be directly related to my music. If it isn’t, I don’t really see a point to it.

When you begin to teach jazz, the most dangerous thing is that you tend to teach style…I had eleven piano students, and I would say eight of them didn’t even want to know about chords or anything – they didn’t even want to do anything that anybody had ever done, because they didn’t want to be imitators. Well, of course, this is pretty naive…but nevertheless it does bring to light the fact that if you’re going to try to teach jazz…you must abstract the principles of music which have nothing to do with style, and this is exceedingly difficult. So there, the teaching of jazz is a very touchy point. It ends up where the jazz player, ultimately, if he’s going to be a serious jazz player, teaches himself.

The sign of a mature musician is knowing what not to play.

People will hire you and then tell you not to do what you were doing when they heard you.

I love songs that are very autobiographical.