Quotes About Guitar Playing

#1. The very first concert I ever went to on my own was actually Rory Gallagher. In a one-month period in 1973 or '74, I saw him, Thin Lizzy and the Rolling Stones. I wasn't really a big Rory Gallagher fan, but I thought his guitar playing was fabulous. But Thin Lizzy, they were fabulous.

Robert Smith

#2. I'm really very embarrassed about my guitar playing, in one way, because it's very poor. I can never move but I can make a guitar speak.

John Lennon

#3. I'm glad I get singled out for my slide guitar-playing, which isn't that difficult to do. I didn't take guitar lessons, but I just love the way it sounds, almost like the human voice.

Bonnie Raitt

#4. My father was a guitar player, and I was raised with a super high standard of what good guitar playing was.

Billy Corgan

#5. This is going to sound crazy, but I can hear music in my head. I can imagine a piano or a guitar playing, and I can sort of think out ...

Ryan Adams

#6. When the intellectual part of guitar playing overrides the spiritual, you don't get to extreme heights.

John Frusciante

#7. Guitar playing is very important to me. It's like golf to some other people; it's important to me that I play good.

Merle Haggard

#8. I approach playing acoustic guitar more of as a percussive instrument. It's fragile. I don't have a lot of finesse when it comes to my guitar playing.

Billie Joe Armstrong

#9. Of course, it is very important to be sober when you take an exam. Many worthwhile careers in the street-cleansing, fruit-picking and subway-guitar-playing industries have been founded on a lack of understanding of this simple fact.

Terry Pratchett

#10. Guitar playing isn't really for everybody.

Brad Paisley

#11. Guitar playing is just something that came to me and is really second nature now.

Dave Navarro

#12. My guitar playing is a synthesis of traditional American acoustic style and Urban Pop and R&B.

John Oates

#13. Guitar playing is both extremely easy for me and extremely difficult for me at the same time.

Kirk Hammett

#14. Basically, I'm just a guitar player that figured out I wasn't ever gonna be able to buy dinner with my guitar playing so I got into songwriting, which is a little more profitable business.

J.J. Cale

#15. Rock guitarists usually do not wish to think trains of thought about anything but their own guitar playing during a long solo, and I could not play this way if I were not able to divide my attention between my ever changing musical environment and my instrument itself.

John Frusciante

#16. The bulk of my set is instrumental and you have to give yourself and the audience some relief because a performance is not about great guitar playing it's really about entertainment.

Leo Kottke

#17. As I've grown older I've been more influenced by more meandering styles of guitar playing, whether it's Celtic or Ethiopian folk music or some kind of noisier jazz like Sonny Sharrock. In terms of songwriting, I don't know that I could even pin it down.

Ted Leo

#18. Oh, man, I love the Staple Singers. I love Pop Staples' guitar playing, too. He's one of my favorite guitar players.

Brittany Howard

#19. and I learned more at the hands of Carl Wilson than I learned from anybody else. He taught me a fuck of a lot of guitar playing. That man is a good guitar player.

Holly George-Warren

#20. The Lounge Lizards were relating with a tradition and it was like I was playing within a musical context. The guitar playing stood out as being different in some way. That was a real education for me.

Arto Lindsay

#21. I'm looking for anything interesting in the guitar playing, songwriting, artwork, and production. If you look at the stack of CDs on my desk and in my car, you'll find a very wide range of music under the umbrella of metal.

David Pajo

#22. No matter how you cut them, paste them, rotate them, or distort them, lip syncing and air-guitar playing are fundamentally foolish activities, and anyone seen to be engaging in them with anything approaching a straight face is, by definition, taking herself or himself much too seriously.

Walter Kirn

#23. I've never thought Mr. Nelson had much use for me since I wasn't an athlete. He probably considered me a failure to the male species, and I'm sure he harbored questions about my sexuality. To him, I was some artsy-fatsy guitar playing fairy. Like I said, the man was an asshole.

Katie Ashley

#24. I grew up with all kinds ofmusic, but my heart was particularly drawn to Country Music because of the guitar playing, the lyrics and of artists like Steve Warner and Vince Gill.

Bryan White

#25. Although I dig my guitar playing, I think it's kind of an obvious situation; I play what I want to play within my own restrictions.

Pete Townshend

#26. ,,, all around it would have to be Eddie Cochran, because it wasn't just music with him; it was his guitar playing, his look, his singing, I'd say that, all things considered, he's probably my favorite "cat" of all time

Brian Setzer

#27. Im not one for showing off. But I guess my guitar-playing sticks out.

Bert Jansch

#28. Arranging is the way I put my stamp on my music as much as my guitar playing.

Lee Ritenour

#29. Let me explain something about guitar playing. Everyone's got their own character, and that's the thing that's amazed me about guitar playing since the day I first picked it up. Everyone's approach to what can come out of six strings is different from another person, but it's all valid.

Jimmy Page

#30. Some-one called my style 'sense of urgency' guitar playing and I've always admitted I often don't know where I'm going when I solo. But that desperation is what makes it exciting.

Richard Lloyd

#31. Personally, being somewhat envious of Richard's (Thompson) songwriting and guitar playing, it's somewhat satisfying he's not yet achieved household-name status. It serves him right for being so good.

David Byrne

#32. I guess because I had such a horrible life growing up, going from place to place not knowing what I was gonna do and ending up being homeless, there was a lot of pain and a lot of anger that was coming out through my guitar playing.

Dave Mustaine

#33. Lenny Breau dazzled me with his extraordinary guitar playing ... I wish the world had the opportunity to experience his artistry.

George Benson

#34. I was immediately taken with Geoff Muldaur's rich soulful voice, masterful phrasing and guitar playing when I first heard him.

Lucinda Williams

#35. My guitar playing has not developed as much as I think it could because I never practice. I only play when I'm writing or recording or when I'm playing on tour. When I'm sitting around at home, I never play.

Juliana Hatfield

#36. I'd much rather talk about guitar playing. I hate it when people ask me about my lyrics. I always feel like telling them to just go and read them.

James Hetfield

#37. I'm supportive of women, absolutely, and it's so gratifying to have girls come up and say, 'I'm really inspired by your guitar playing.' I mean no disrespect to the sisterhood, but musically I feel more drawn to things like Dirty Projectors, the National and Grizzly Bear.

St. Vincent

#38. Anything that has more of Graham's guitar playing, I'm bound to like.

Jonny Greenwood

#39. When you think about where guitar playing is going today ... : it's going everywhere at the same time.

Joe Satriani

#40. Greg Ginn was certainly a huge influence on my guitar playing. I put him up there with people like Eddie Van Halen. Eddie Van Halen changed everything; I don't necessarily like everything he did, but he definitely changed everything.

Buzz Osborne

#41. Directing is like guitar playing. That's a unique mind-set and talent, unto itself. I like the idea of putting everything together to make a great movie.

Slash

#42. Guitar playing is not my strong suit. I cut my finger off, working in an oil field, and it don't work anymore, so I'm limited as to what I can do on the guitar.

Trace Adkins

#43. EverTune is, without a doubt, the most important advance in guitar playing since the electric tuner. Using the EverTune, both onstage and in the studio, has completely changed the game. It's almost impossible to explain how amazing this innovation is. Pure magic!

Ben Weinman

#44. For me, I think the only danger is being too much in love with guitar playing.
The MUSIC is the most important thing, and the guitar is only the instrument.

Jerry Garcia

#45. The early influences, in many ways, were in Baltimore. I was passing open windows where there might be a radio playing something funky. In the summertime, sometimes there'd be a man sitting on a step, playing an acoustic guitar, playing some kind of folk blues. The seed had been planted.

Jerry Leiber

#46. Guitar playing, as currently understood, has more to do with sports than it does to do with music. It's an Olympic challenge type of situation. The challenges are in the realm of speed, redundancy, choreography, and grooming ... clouds of educated gnat-notes.

Frank Zappa

#47. I didn't want to take the guitar solos down note-for-note, but more or less use them as a map, and keep all the hooks from the guitar playing, and let myself come through.

Brian Setzer

#48. I grew up with rock and pop music from the 70s and 80s. I had to play guitar in school - it was a music college and we had to take instrument classes there - so I think guitar playing and guitar sounds have always been an influence.

Christian Fennesz

#49. My original interests and intentions in guitar playing were primarily created on quality of tone, for instance, the way the instrument could be made to echo or simulate the human voice.

Eric Clapton

#50. Every time the guys were knocked out by my guitar playing and the girls were knocked out by the type of songs I did. That set us apart from the average blues band.

George Thorogood

#51. I remember when I thought of singing as the bit that went between the guitar playing - something I couldn't wait to get out of the way. Singing was originally like a chore that I didn't really enjoy.

Eric Clapton

#52. As soon as I had a guitar I loved it, and I started playing in every spare moment.

David Rawlings

#53. Age isn't a barrier to playing the bass, and I've definitely improved over the years, although maybe I'm not as flash as I once was. But looking back, I can't imagine a life without a guitar.

Suzi Quatro

#54. I worked hard at that through most of the '80s, and in 1990 my house burned in New Hampshire, and my studios and my offices. I had to decide at what level to rebuild, and I decided that I was going to stop trying to be all things to all people, and just go back to playing the guitar.

Tom Rush

#55. The Tinted Windows shows were very fun but it's very different for me as a performer. I'm not playing music - I'm just singing and I missed that. I miss rocking out on keys, drums, guitar ... whatever it is.

Taylor Hanson

#56. My first instrument was actually the trombone, but that didn't last long. Soon I was playing guitar in bands from the time I was 11 or 12.

Dave Grohl

#57. I just started playing guitar and started singing and started working on this act that I would call 'Don McLean' when I was probably in high school.

Don McLean

#58. If you told me I was going to live to 240, I would take 10 years off and try and act. I don't have that kind of time, so I'd much rather stick to playing guitar.

John Mayer

#59. I'm just very sort of compulsive and lack the ability to keep things in perspective. If I'm not writing or playing guitar or on the microphone or out on the road, I'm cleaning pots and pans or freaking out about some plumbing issue or tweeting.

Marc Maron

#60. Death is never more than a breath away from the act of playing music. Each note on a guitar represents a small curve: birth, life, and death-and then you start over.

Andy Summers

#61. A guitar is a very personal extension of the person playing it. You have to be emotionally and spiritually connected to your instrument. I'm very brutal on my instruments, but not all the time.

Eddie Van Halen

#62. Once I got a guitar that was relatively user-friendly, but not super-duper easy, I really came on as a guitarist, at that point. It helped. It was a super-expensive guitar either, but something needs to steer you a bit, if you're playing an instrument that is really hard.

Jimmy Page

#63. Catfish is not playing guitar no more, he's doing like a home-front thing. He had been in the business around ten years before I got in it, so I guess he's had enough of it.

Bootsy Collins

#64. It was great to do August Rush and have all the challenges of playing that character, especially the American accent for the first time and also playing the guitar and the conducting I had to do.

Freddie Highmore

#65. Do you have a feel for the guitar? Do you have any idea what this little baby is capable of?" Without waiting for an answer, he climbed up into his chair and began playing "Light My Fire," adding, "This one is for Joan.

David Sedaris

#66. Anyone who can do the splits and come back up on the backbeat, as James Brown and Prince can, has my eternal respect. Prince, who is a genius of the highest order, can come back up while singing and playing the guitar.

Bill Nighy

#67. Keith Richards ... was once asked how he came up with all those amazing guitar riffs. His answer? He just starts playing until he makes the right mistake. In other words he's optimistic he will create something good by virtue of getting something "wrong."

Mark Stevenson

#68. Around middle school I studied jazz guitar and ended up playing in a jazz band for a bit. But, after high school, I haven't even touched a guitar.

Mike Tucker

#69. People don't understand what music really is. I've been a musician since I was 6 years old. I got my first piano, was playing recitals at 8, 10 I picked up a guitar, 12 I picked up my first Pearl Master drum set. I was an artist before I was an 'artist.'

Mitchel Musso

#70. How many people have stopped playing guitar, writing poetry, or painting watercolors - activities packed with flow triggers - because these are also activities that do not squarely fit into culturally acceptable responsibility categories like "career" or "children"?

Steven Kotler

#71. When I'm not writing music, I'm playing guitar, or reading philosophy. So all I have left is just an hour or two for Claudia Schiffer.

Richard Pinhas

#72. Acting, I love it and I feel that I'm good at it, but the thing that makes me feel most alive is when I'm playing guitar and singing.

Taryn Manning

#73. I learned how to play guitar by playing along to Jane's Addiction records and Smashing Pumpkins records, things you can totally hear if you listen to my guitar.

Chino Moreno

#74. I designed a guitar for Ibanez and then they started manufacturing it - it's called the Jem - it's 26 years old and I still play it. As a kid I liked Les Pauls and Strats, but they had limitations for the kind of playing I wanted to do.

Steve Vai

#75. My dad, who plays guitar and piano and was in cover bands, along with my older brother, Matt, taught me guitar and stuff. I started writing acoustic songs and playing by myself in 7th grade.

Conor Oberst

#76. It was cool at the rock camp - girls could just be themselves and they could be silly, they could roll around on the floor playing guitar.

Courtney Barnett

#77. Usually, I'll just sit down at a piano or with a guitar, and I'll just be relaxed and playing music. Because that's what relaxes your subconscious. That's why everyone from animals to humans love music.

Cat Power

#78. I started playing the guitar and singing at about 11 or 12.

Drake Bell

#79. I've learned not to let it be the end of the world if a boy doesn't like you. I used to put so much effort into boys. I started playing guitar because I wanted to impress this boy. Then, I ended up in love with guitar and I didn't care about the boy anymore.

Ellie Goulding

#80. If I'm playing with Ozzy it's just a guitar thing. But with the vocals I feel like I'm studying for the SATs.

Zakk Wylde

#81. I've always enjoyed singing and can't recall a time in my life where I wasn't singing. I'm most grateful for the strength I have in that department. I have a lot of bad habits on the guitar which limits my playing ability. But I get a little better each year.

Jason Mraz

#82. I'm still like an excited kid playing guitar in front of the bedroom mirror.

James Bay

#83. 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.

B.B. King

#84. I have come to the conclusion - and I don't know why it took me so long, but nevertheless, I'm here now - that a lot of people tell me they don't get enough guitar on my albums. So I decided to do an album where the guitar would be the singer, playing the melody.

Carlos Santana

#85. When I was about 12, I had my first paying gig - 8 dollars to play rhythm guitar in a polka band. Pretty soon, I ended up playing in all the bars within driving distance of Abbott, Texas.

Willie Nelson

#86. Texas people are really strong in their roots. I started writing and playing guitar at 17. I've always loved music, and my dad is a singer-songwriter.

Miranda Lambert

#87. When I was 17 I got a guitar for my birthday and started discovering Bob Dylan and James Taylor and the whole '60s thing, and that made me want to make songs, to go beyond just playing an instrument. I needed to write I guess.

Jason Reeves

#88. I think a guitar solo is how my emotion is most freely released, because verbal articulation isn't my strongest communication strength. My wife thinks that I should do interviews by listening to the questions and playing the answer on guitar.

David Gilmour

#89. I feel like something I've wanted to do for a really long time, in a feature film or anything, is playing a rocker. Somewhere where I can be on a stage and have a guitar or a microphone and just kind of jam out.

Olivia Holt

#90. God is playing my guitar, I am with God when I play.

Link Wray

#91. I do some solo, acoustic stuff, but I also like plugging in my electric guitar and playing loud with a band.

James Bay

#92. I was basically a dork that hit the books and liked to build things and did all of the things that you weren't supposed to do to be popular. But somehow I ended up onstage, playing guitar in front of everybody else.

Tom Scholz

#93. A horn has that voice quality, and an electric guitar can emulate that. But playing an acoustic, the notes don't sustain like that.

Bill Orcutt

#94. I'm a huge fan of Joe Walsh and a big James Gang fan. A lot of what I know about playing the guitar I learned from listening to him.

Tom Scholz

#95. I'm really looking forward to it, if you can imagine floating weightless, watching the world pour by through the big bay window of the space station playing a guitar; just a tremendous place to think about where we are in history.

Chris Hadfield

#96. I have been playing a lot of keyboards, especially in the last five or six years. I suppose it gives you more scope than the guitar, although it does tend to make you write a different way.

Mick Ralphs

#97. When The Who first started, we were playing blues, and I dug the blues and I knew what I was supposed to be playing, but I couldn't play it. I couldn't get it out. I knew what I had to play; it was in my head. I could hear the notes in my head, but I couldn't get them out on the guitar.

Pete Townshend

#98. I drummed in some rock bands. I asked for a drum kit when I was 15 and my parents were kind enough to buy me one and I just started playing with my buddies who played guitar.

Miles Teller

#99. You are working up to Mr. Fantastic Fiction levels of Zombie Expert, which is like playing Guitar Hero on some level that actually melts the guitar controller, burning your fingers with searing hot plastic till you scream in pain. Only with words. And zombies.

Libba Bray

#100. I was really into music. I started playing guitar also when I was nine. I wanted to be in the Beatles, even though John Lennon died the year I got a guitar and the Beatles broke up before I was born.

Tig Notaro