Richie Sambora

The true artform is being a human being.

I don’t like recording studios – except my own, which is just a little room above the garage.

Even when you write it, someone’s got to play it. So if you can play it and bypass all the rest of the things, you’re still doing as great as someone that has spent forty years trying to find out how to do that. I’m really pro-human beings, pro-expression of everything.

Jazz is known all over the world as an American musical art form and that’s it. No America, no jazz. I’ve seen people try to connect it to other countries, for instance to Africa, but it doesn’t have a damn thing to do with Africa.

We go in there and we work on altering those ideas and in many cases go in different directions.

Just don’t give up trying to do what you really want to do. Where there is love and inspiration, I don’t think you can go wrong.

It’s difficult for me to dislike an artist, no matter what he’s creating.

True Jazz lovers understand the rhythms are infectious because they are the roots.

I cringed when I heard myself described as a Jazz singer. I’ve always thought of myself as a Jazz vocalist.

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.

One thing I like about jazz is that it emphasized doing things differently from what other people were doing.

You blows who you is.

The more you listen, the more your hear.

I have no elitist concepts about Jazz. I would not be the musician I am today without experiencing invaluable music styles that are at the roots of African American black life and culture.

A name doesn’t make the music. It’s just called that to differentiate it from other types of music.