Bill Frisell Quotes

#1. Kenny G is not real jazz. I don't even think Wynton Marsalis is real jazz. I don't think Harry Connick Jr. is real jazz. If there is such a thing as real jazz, The Lounge Lizards is real jazz, Henry Threadgill is real jazz, Bill Frisell is real jazz, you know?

John Lurie

#2. I did a song, "Court and Spark," for a Joni Mitchell tribute album that's yet to see the light of day. So she's someone I'd like to do something with, sure. I worked with the great guitar player Bill Frisell on Phantom Moon - that was fun. I'm such a fan; he's amazing.

Duncan Sheik

#3. First I was a European-style player, then I was a downtown 'noise guy,' and now some people call me an Americana guy.

Bill Frisell

#4. It is often found that modesty and humility not only do no good, but are positively hurtful, when they are shown to the arrogant who have taken up a prejudice against you, either from envy or from any other cause.

Niccolo Machiavelli

#5. An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools.

Ernest Hemingway,

#6. To me, jazz is a place where anything is possible.

Bill Frisell

#7. You're lucky to head a coalition government. I am a coalition government on my own.

John Major

#8. In so many ways, it feels the same now when I play as the very first time I picked up the instrument. There's always this sound out there that's just a little bit beyond my reach and I'm trying to get there and that just sort of keeps me going.

Bill Frisell

#9. I used to edit myself. If something seemed super-simple I had to make it more complicated. Now I'm trying to let what's in there come out and acknowledge where I come from. I'm trying to make it more..true.

Bill Frisell

#10. I hate labels; the problem is that if you say you're one thing, it's hard for people to imagine you as something else. Music is way more complicated than that.

Bill Frisell

#11. Music, for me, has always been a place where anything is possible
a refuge, a magical world where anyone can go, where all kinds of people can come together, and anything can happen. We are limited only by our imaginations.

Bill Frisell

#12. The reason I started to do comics for kids, the real reason is because it worked for me.

Francoise Mouly

#13. I love listening to other musicians and seeing what they do to gain their distinctive respective sounds and edge.

Bill Frisell

#14. I do know the older I get, the more I'm referencing music I heard as a kid.

Bill Frisell

#15. Every time I play with someone, not just a new person, but someone I've been with all along, that's where I really learn.

Bill Frisell

#16. We'd buy brochures of Dylan lyrics and stay up late interpreting them. Dylan's words struck chords of creative thinking.

Walter Isaacson

#17. Would that be dangerous, to not look while being looked at?

Helen Oyeyemi

#18. There's always this sound out there that's just a little beyond my reach & that just sort of keeps me going.

Bill Frisell

#19. A Clinton presidency is an Obama third term. And it's very difficult for them to get away from it.

Paul Ryan

#20. I can write the stuff and play it myself and have something in my head, but the best feeling is when somebody else plays it and they're hearing something other than what I'm hearing.

Bill Frisell

#21. It's incredible how one song or even one little phrase or just a few notes, if you really concentrate on it, can be a kaleidoscope of possibility.

Bill Frisell

#22. Luckily, my wife is amazing. She's one of the few people in my life I'm completely honest with. I've told her everything about my past. She knows me inside and out. There's no secrets at all.

Brendon Urie

#23. I've been lucky with the circle of people I'm playing with. We've played enough that there's a language we talk with each other when we play.

Bill Frisell

#24. I'm basically a pretty shy person and I don't dance or get into fights. But there are all these things inside me that get out when I perform. It's like a real world when I play, here I can do all the things that I can't do in real life.

Bill Frisell

#25. Music doesn't hurt anybody, that's what's amazing. Everything is in there, every kind of human emotion, from the darkest to the lightest. And it has power. Unbelievable power.

Bill Frisell

#26. I spend a lot of time copying saxophone players and trumpet players. Not to say that it is not important to listen to guitar players, but there's so much music out there and so many possibilities. I like anyone who plays any instrument.

Bill Frisell

#27. I feel so lucky that my high school was right in the middle of Denver, which is one of those sort of segregated towns, with black and white and Hispanic neighborhoods. But the school I went to was right in the middle of the whole thing.

Bill Frisell

#28. For me the music community was always like a model for what could be. The way people would play together, just harmony and being - old guys and young guys, black guys and white guys. It was setting an example for what the rest of us could be.

Bill Frisell