Steve Lacy

I started in New Orleans music and played all through the history of Jazz.

Risk is at the heart of Jazz. Every note we play is a risk.

You have to sound sad first, then maybe later you can sound good.

People don’t want to suffer. They want to sound good immediately and this is one of the biggest problems.

In composition you have all the time you want to decide what to say in 15 seconds, in improvisation you have 15 seconds.

Jazz is like wine. When it is new it’s only for the experts, but when it gets older everybody wants it.

By and large Jazz has always been like the kind of a man you wouldn’t want your daughter to associate with.

The weird thing about bass is the simplest stuff to do is the hardest.

Music does not come to you. You have to come to it and you’ll walk away with something you didn’t have before.

If it ain’t fun, I want no part of it man. That’s the reason I play.

Men have died for this music. You can’t get more serious than that.

Never play anything the same way twice.

It’s either hip or it ain’t.

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.

It seems like I always had to work harder than other people. Those nights when everybody else is asleep, and you sit in your room trying to play scales. I just wonder where I was when the talent was being given out, like George Benson, Kenny Burrell, Eric Clapton… oh, there’s many more! I wouldn’t want to be like them, you understand, but I’d like to be equal, if you will.

It’s taken me all my life to learn what not to play.

Audiences are smart. They are not going to come out to see you unless you are honest.

The wonderful thing about Jazz is its willingness to take chances.

If you have to ask what jazz is, you’ll never know.

The better it gets, the fewer of us know it.

Jazz musicians are the only workers who will put in a full shift for pay and then go somewhere else and continue to work for free.