Top 100 Quotes About Saxophone
#1. If all else fails, I could go to a train station and open up my saxophone case and make some bucks. I can do "Mary Had A Little Lamb," I can do "Happy Birthday."
Sean Price
#2. I have not practiced saxophone since 1980. I mean, not one note. I do not pick it up in my house, and that's the end of it.
John Zorn
#3. You can make a saxophone into an electric organ; you can do everything with it.
Gerry Mulligan
#4. My father was in a dance band, and I wanted to do what he did, play the saxophone, but I couldn't blow a note, so he suggested the guitar. Chromatic harmonica was actually my first instrument, and I got very good at it - not quite Stevie Wonder, but very good.
Pete Townshend
#5. 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
#6. When I started studying tenor saxophone as a kid in Belfast, I did so with a guy named George Cassidy, who was also a big inspiration.
Van Morrison
#7. Where science is a dignified waltz in three-quarter time, magic is an improvised saxophone solo: all gut checks and synchronicities.
Michael G. Williams
#8. My secret dream has always been to be a jazz musician. I tried the saxophone for a year or two when I was younger, but unfortunately I had to face the fact that I was not really talented!
Gaspard Ulliel
#9. I love the sound of the saxophone. It became my singing voice, and it sounds so human. The saxophone could carry the words past the border of words. It can carry it a little bit farther.
Joy Harjo
#10. Any saxophone player will have those influences come through in their music in a very different way. I can listen to the same 10 sax players as someone else for my entire life, and we'll both play completely differently. That's the beauty of being a musician.
Kenny G
#11. I heard Sidney Bechet play a Duke Ellington piece and fell in love with the soprano saxophone.
Steve Lacy
#12. Black music is a group music. That's why I don't like doing a solo saxophone thing: My feeling stems from rhythm, I really have to feel that rhythmic thing happening.
Jimmy Lyons
#13. I've been working on the soprano saxophone for 40 years, and the possibilities are astounding. It's up to you, the only limit is the imagination.
Steve Lacy
#14. The saxophone does not speak that language. The saxophone speaks the language of the underground, the jaded melancholy of the half-light - grimy and sexy and sweaty and hard. It is the language of orphans and bastards and whores.
Eleanor Catton
#15. Play difficult and interesting things. If you play boring things, you risk losing your appetite. Saxophone can be tedious with too much of the same.
Steve Lacy
#16. That's the beautiful thing about the saxophone. It can peacefully coexist with just about anything - whether it's hip-hop, rap, rock music, pop, R&B or jazz, there's a place for the saxophone in all of those styles.
Dave Koz
#17. I've played every instrument you could possibly think of for 10 minutes. So I'm mediocre at everything. I can play drums, guitar, piano, violin, saxophone, clarinet, flute ... Just not well.
Kat Dennings
#18. I play drums, clarinet, saxophone, trumpet, french horn, piano.
Norman Wisdom
#19. My first album didn't come out until I was 27, which in pop years is late, you know. But when it came time to arrange it, I became a kid in a toy shop. I had a harp and a saxophone quartet and a symphony orchestra. I went berserk for a time.
Bjork
#20. I try not to talk during the day when I have a show that night. My voice is my instrument, just like a saxophonist's instrument is his saxophone, plus also his voice, if he's the one between tunes that makes announcements.
Emo Philips
#21. The saxophone is an imperfect instrument, especially the tenor and soprano, as far as intonation goes. The challenge is to sing on an imperfect instrument that is outside of your body.
Stan Getz
#22. I played in the high school band. I was the one baritone saxophone out of 80 other people. No one could tell whether I was hittin' the right notes or the wrong notes.
Bobby Keys
#23. Not what you would call a musical family, but my father used to play saxophone, and I discovered many genres of music when I was a child.
Rokia Traore
#24. I practice my saxophone three hours a day. I'm not saying I'm particularly special, but if you do something three hours a day for forty years, you get pretty good at it.
Kenny G
#25. I get stoned, I can't get home, I'm calling long distance on a public saxophone. My head is achin', my back is breakin', feel I got run over by Captain Coconut and his dog named Rover.
Jimi Hendrix
#26. As a horn player, the greatest compliment one can get is when a person comes to you and says, 'I heard this saxophone on the radio the other day and I knew it was you. I don't know the song, but I know it was you on sax.'
Clarence Clemons
#27. I started realizing that music is the one area where I've always let go. When that saxophone goes into my mouth, I get into a space where I never think about the notes I've already played or anticipate the notes ahead.
Kenny G
#28. And I saw the sax line-up that he had behind him and I thought, I'm going to learn the saxophone. When I grow up, I'm going to play in his band. So I sort of persuaded my dad to get me a kind of a plastic saxophone on the hire purchase plan.
David Bowie
#29. You don't try to duplicate certain things that other cats do, because you could never do it as well as they do. Nobody can get on that tenor saxophone and play like Trane, because he's the only one who can spell out chords and sound good when he does it.
Wynton Marsalis
#30. I am a frustrated saxophone player. If I could, I would abandon all of my books, and I would trade it all if I could play the way people I admire play.
Robert Pinsky
#31. Alto (saxophone) is just a very hard instrument; there's so few people that play it really well. I feel it's the best one, too, now. At first I didn't feel that way; I wanted to be a tenor player. It took a long time for me to feel that alto was the most expressive of the saxophones.
Art Pepper
#32. I worked with a guy, I can't think of his name, him and his wife, and one of them had a saxophone and the other played drums. It wasn't a regular job but I did a few gigs around home with them.
Earl Scruggs
#33. I'm a little musically inclined; I play the clarinet and the saxophone.
Joel Murray
#34. The potential for the saxophone is unlimited.
Steve Lacy
#35. The saxophone was created to mimic the human voice and I think that's why I gravitated toward the saxophone eventually. I'd loved the clarinet, but there's something about the saxophone that just grabs you.
Matana Roberts
#36. Saxophone is one thing, and music is another.
Steve Lacy
#38. My saxophone playing
And my wino career are in a slump
'Cause I find myself now living
In a cardboard refrigerator box down by the Houston dump
Jeff Simmons
#39. Sometimes a sound gets overused. There is such a thing as a good saxophone, but it's like those fields in agriculture - they need to rest for a year or so. You need time to burn all the saxophones and start from scratch.
Thomas Mars
#40. Nobody was playing the soprano saxophone and certainly nobody was trying to do anything with it. So I was all alone. I didn't know that at first.
Steve Lacy
#41. The saxophone is a very interesting machine, but I'm more interested in music.
Steve Lacy
#42. Bill Clinton is like a lot of white politicians. They eat soul food, they party with black women, they play the saxophone, but when it comes to domestic and foreign policy, they make the same decisions that are destructive to African people in this country and throughout the world.
Sister Souljah
#43. Making a painting is like playing the saxophone. You hit the note and it comes out.
Julian Schnabel
#44. My grammar school graduating class in 1941 had a little party for 13 or 14 year-old kids. [Trumpeter] King Kolax's band played for the party and Gene Ammons was playing tenor saxophone with the band. And that's when I said, "That's it!" Just like that, tunnelvision ever since.
Johnny Griffin
#45. The drum is the heart of music. The saxophone can play and then rest, as can all of them except the drums; the drummer keeps going - he can't afford to stop.
Jo Jones
#46. He slid his saxophone under the bed before we got naked on it, and I think it made the whole thing better. I really do.
Charlie Close
#47. Bill Justis was a saxophone player, good musician, arranger, and friend of mine who had a big hit called 'Raunchy.'
Ray Stevens
#48. Joe: We can't just walk out on her without saying goodbye. Jerry: What? Since when? You usually walk out and leave 'em with nothing but a kick in the teeth. Joe: That's when I was a saxophone player. Now I'm a millionaire.
Tony Curtis
#49. I remember once, when I started writing for the alto saxophone, a saxophonist told me to think of it as being like a cross between an oboe and a viola, but louder.
Gavin Bryars
#50. I know I'm an African-American, and I know I play the saxophone, but I'm not a jazz musician. I'm not a classical musician, either. My music is like my life: It's in between these areas.
Anthony Braxton
#52. Dave Matthews is mixing violin solos with saxophone solos and it's bad for the baby
Rob Sheffield
#53. I wanted an electric train for Christmas but I got the saxophone instead.
Clarence Clemons
#54. I like what Oliver Lakes does on the saxophone. The saxophone comes pretty close to the sound of the human voice and when Oliver plays with other sax players, it's like a dialogue.
Yusef Komunyakaa
#55. You can work on the saxophone alone, but ultimately you must perform with others.
Steve Lacy
#56. I wanted to play saxophone, but all I could get were a few squeaks.
Stevie Ray Vaughan
#57. After I left Texas and went to California, I had a hard time getting anyone to play anything that I was writing, so I had to end up playing them myself. And that's how I ended up just being a saxophone player.
Ornette Coleman
#58. You know, when I'm playing, I think of myself in front of the Wailing Wall with a saxophone in my hands, and I'm davening, I'm really telling it to the Wall.
Stan Getz
#59. When you play a sax, that saxophone is irreverent. It's noisy; it's a trickster ... you cannot hide the saxophone in your hands, so it's a good teacher.
Joy Harjo
#60. A lot of my video work is super lo-fi on purpose. I'm not trying to become technically super proficient. The only thing I'm interested in becoming technically proficient on is my alto saxophone.
Matana Roberts
#61. So I'm looking to the saxophone as a resource which has its own unique set of possibilities. I'm looking to exploit them and develop them and have the fullest range of possibilities of the saxophone be known.
Evan Parker
#62. As we passed a bloke playing a saxophone underneath one of the arches, he put down the sax and started doing a juggling thing with his hands. It was a bit peculiar, though, because, as I said to Jas, He hasn't got any balls.
Louise Rennison
#63. I love a lot of the young, new artists who are coming up, including Adele. I suppose anybody would freak out to work with her. To be able to play a saxophone solo on one of her songs would be the most ultimate thing ever.
Dave Koz
#64. I grew up with classical music blasting in my parents' living room and my older brother's practicing saxophone in his room listening to jazz ... a beautiful chaos.
Josephine De La Baume
#65. Don't play the saxophone, let the saxophone play you.
Charlie Parker
#68. I understood that if I wanted to work, the saxophone was the main instrument. The clarinet was what we call a double.
Lee Konitz
#69. I play a bunch of instruments, like piano, drums, guitar and bass. And the kazoo every now and then. I'm trying to learn how to play the trumpet and the saxophone. That's what I'm learning how to play.
Mac Miller
#70. I always wanted to play some kind of instrument - piano, saxophone, whatever. I took it up for a while, then forgot about it because I didn't have the time.
Mads Mikkelsen
#71. Actually, when I was in elementary school, I saw a saxophone. A band came to my school, and I saw this guy get up and play this solo. And I said, 'Oh man, what is that! That must be fantastic!'
Ornette Coleman
#72. The saxophone is the cocaine of the woodwind family, the sax teacher continues. Saxophonists are admired because they are dangerous, because they have explored a darker, more sinister side of themselves.
Eleanor Catton
#73. My world was a community ballet school, a marching band, my two sisters and my girlfriends. I played saxophone in the band and was a bit nerdy.
Jennifer Garner
#74. The worst waste of breath, next to playing a saxophone, is advising a son
Kin Hubbard
#75. I played saxophone, so I was into jazz. I learned from each audience and each teacher that I had. I can't really tell you any rules or anything, but the way I develop my beliefs is really just by personally learning from different situations.
Chad Hugo
#76. I don't know why, but I like the saxophone.
Matt Dillon
#77. When somebody turned me on to a Coltrane record around seventh grade, I took up saxophone.
Tom Verlaine
#78. I played saxophone and trumpet. Pretty nerdy.
Kesha
#79. I've played drums since I was 15. My sisters and I all played instruments. I kind of started with piano and then I actually played saxophone with a jazz band in middle school. So, any knowledge I had of jazz music was from playing alto-sax back then.
Miles Teller
#80. And, man he cried when he talked. He cried big tears, the kind it takes an old man to cry, the kind it takes a saxophone to play.
Robert James Waller
#81. Cello is my first instrument, then piano, drums, bass, violin, recorder, saxophone, but I'd never play them live!
Dev Hynes
#82. After one month with a saxophone shoved in my mouth, my military combatant's enthusiasm disappeared completely. Instead of flying choppers behind enemy lines, I started to fantasise about living in New York, London or Paris.
Gilad Atzmon
#83. I always hated jazz guitar. I loved jazz saxophone but I hated jazz guitar. If I would buy an organ trio record I would make sure I'd buy one that did not have a guitar player on it. The sound was awful!
Tom Verlaine
#84. I enjoy playing the band as the band. I 'be' the whole band and I'm playing the drums, I'm playing the guitar, I'm playing the saxophone. To me, the most wonderful thing about playing music is that.
Chick Corea
#85. I can't play any horns. Every time I tried to take saxophone lessons as a kid ... I can't whistle. I don't know if that has anything to do with ...
Pete Yorn
#86. I used to play too with a boy who played a saxophone. We didn't play no blues, we'd play a lot of love songs - 'Stardust', 'Blue Moon', 'Out Cold Again', 'Sophisticated Lady', 'Stars Fell On Alabama', a lot of different stuff.
David Edwards
#87. The sax solo as we know it today would not exist without Gerry Rafferty. His 1978 soft-rock classic 'Baker Street' has to be the 'Ulysses' of rock & roll saxophone, giving the entire chorus over to Raphael Ravenscroft's sax solo, creating one of the Seventies' most enduringly creepy sounds.
Rob Sheffield
#88. Talking about the all night concerts, I did some of the first all night concerts back in the 60's with this little harmonium, and I also had saxophone taped delays.
Terry Riley
#89. It's great to hear someone really care for the soprano saxophone.
Rufus Reid
#90. I went to this little performing arts school in downtown Phoenix. You had to dance or act, and everyone sang in choir. I started out playing the saxophone, but I always wanted to be in an orchestra. That was a dream as a kid, and there aren't a lot of saxophones in an orchestra.
Kacy Hill
#91. Usually I can hear the pianos, the saxophone, and usually I can hear Ronnie. But I really need to listen to Keith and Mick. The rest of the band is sort of an embellishment to that.
Charlie Watts
#92. Throughout the evening I would be recording these long saxophone delays and about four hours into the concert, if I wanted to take a break I would just play back the saxophone.
Terry Riley
#93. I've always been interested in singing. My sister's a fantastic singer, and it's just something that's always been around. I play saxophone and guitar. I'd definitely like to pursue it, and it's something I'd like to keep going, if not as a career, then as a hobby.
Charlie Rowe
#94. I practiced saxophone eight hours a day for the first two years I played.
Stan Getz
#95. I like referring to the saxophone and having a guitar lick instead. Same with the cymbals; having the cymbals and not playing cymbals.
Mike Gordon
#96. I started as a musician. I play the saxophone, but from the age of 17, I realised that it's very hard to make a living as a jazz musician in Australia. So I went for an audition and got an acting job and, fortunately, I completely fell in love with that.
John Polson
#97. I like to hear melodies that go from one extreme to the next- saxophone to a bell to a whistle, for instance.
Roscoe Mitchell
#98. If you like an instrument that sings, play the saxophone. At its best it's like the human voice.
Stan Getz
#99. The Englishman foxtrots as he fox-hunts, with all his being, through thickets, through ditches, over hedges, through chiffons, through waiters, over saxophones, to the victorious finish; and who goes home depends on how many the ambulance will accommodate.
Edna St. Vincent Millay
#100. Drum on your drums, batter on your banjos, sob on the long cool winding saxophones. Go to it, O jazzmen.
Carl Sandburg
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