Quotes About The Saxophone

#1. I don't know why, but I like the saxophone.

Matt Dillon

#2. 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

#3. 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

#4. Don't play the saxophone, let the saxophone play you.

Charlie Parker

#5. The saxophone is the embodied spirit of beer.

Arnold Bennett

#6. Don't play the saxophone. Let it play you.

Charlie Parker

#7. I understood that if I wanted to work, the saxophone was the main instrument. The clarinet was what we call a double.

Lee Konitz

#8. 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

#9. 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

#10. 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

#11. 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

#12. 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

#13. 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

#14. 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

#15. 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

#16. 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

#17. If you like an instrument that sings, play the saxophone. At its best it's like the human voice.

Stan Getz

#18. 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

#19. 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

#20. You can work on the saxophone alone, but ultimately you must perform with others.

Steve Lacy

#21. 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

#22. 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

#23. 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

#24. 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

#25. 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

#26. I'm a little musically inclined; I play the clarinet and the saxophone.

Joel Murray

#27. The potential for the saxophone is unlimited.

Steve Lacy

#28. 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

#29. The saxophone is a very interesting machine, but I'm more interested in music.

Steve Lacy

#30. 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

#31. Making a painting is like playing the saxophone. You hit the note and it comes out.

Julian Schnabel

#32. 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

#33. 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

#34. I wanted an electric train for Christmas but I got the saxophone instead.

Clarence Clemons

#35. Drum on your drums, batter on your banjos, sob on the long cool winding saxophones. Go to it, O jazzmen.

Carl Sandburg

#36. 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

#37. Dave Matthews is mixing violin solos with saxophone solos and it's bad for the baby

Rob Sheffield

#38. 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

#39. 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

#40. 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

#41. 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

#42. 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

#43. 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

#44. The worst waste of breath, next to playing a saxophone, is advising a son

Kin Hubbard

#45. 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

#46. At the edge of madness you howl diamonds and pearls.

Aberjhani

#47. 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

#48. 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

#49. 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

#50. 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

#51. It's great to hear someone really care for the soprano saxophone.

Rufus Reid

#52. I practiced saxophone eight hours a day for the first two years I played.

Stan Getz

#53. I like to hear melodies that go from one extreme to the next- saxophone to a bell to a whistle, for instance.

Roscoe Mitchell

#54. 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

#55. 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

#56. 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

#57. I heard Sidney Bechet play a Duke Ellington piece and fell in love with the soprano saxophone.

Steve Lacy

#58. 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

#59. 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

#60. 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

#61. 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

#62. 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

#63. 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

#64. 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

#65. 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

#66. 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

#67. 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

#68. 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

#69. 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

#70. 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

#71. 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

#72. 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

#73. 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