Steve Lacy

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.

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

I fell in love with Jazz when I was 12 listening to Duke Ellington and hearing a lot of Jazz in New York on the radio.

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

There’s a lot of recreational Jazz going on, where cats learn a particular style and become sharks on somebody else’s language.

Let your life be your music and let your music be your life.

There is no doubt that the first requirement for a composer is to be dead

It’s not exclusive, but inclusive, which is the whole spirit of jazz.

There are times when you want to go where you used to go and you can’t go there. So I’m back to Count Basie lifting his hand. And I find you can stop that show with one note just like you can with a hundred.

Tomorrow you’ll wish you had practiced harder today.

The trio is the biggest sound you can have with the smallest unit.

I worked hard learning harmony and theory when I was growing up in Chicago in the 1920s.

My role in society, or any artist or poet’s role, is to try and express what we all feel. Not to tell people how to feel. Not as a preacher, not as a leader, but as a reflection of us all.

Playing the guitar is like telling the truth – you never have to worry about repeating the same [lie] if you told the truth. You don’t have to pretend, or cover up. If someone asks you again, you don’t have to think about it or worry about it because there it is. It’s you.

T-Bone was, to me, that sound of being in heaven.

Judy Garland was the singer I most wanted to sound like then, not to copy, but to get some of her soul and purity. A wonderful young voice.

It’s a matter of who would be right for each song. Mickey Hart for ‘All We Need is An Island’ – he’s the only guy I know who has Tahitian drums and every kind of drum on the planet.

As long as you’ve got your horn in your mouth, you’re developing.

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

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.