Guitar Related Quotes

Quotes by famous guitar players, or quotes about playing the guitar itself, can occasionally be inspiring and fun to recite. During my early years of playing the guitar, when that was the only thing in the world I lived for, sometimes I would lie in bed at night and ponder a particular phrase spoken by one of my favorite guitar heroes as I tried to fall asleep.

Here are some of my favorite quotes by well-known guitarists, or quotes concerning playing the guitar itself. Maybe a couple of them will inspire you in some way.

“The guitar is a small orchestra. It is polyphonic. Every string is a different color, a different voice.”
– Andre Segovia

“You have to know a song so well, that while you are playing it, if someone were to blow your head off with a double-barrelled shotgun, your body would still finish the song.”
– Stefan Grossman (paraphrased)

“We didn’t have any instruments, so I had to use my guitar.”
– Mother Maybelle Carter

“My guitar is not a thing. It is an extension of myself. It is who I am.”
– Joan Jett

“Puberty was very vague. I literally locked myself in a room and played guitar.”
– Johnny Depp (Depp was a guitarist in a moderately successful rock band before becoming an uber-successful movie star and sex symbol.)

“I was left with an urge to make the guitar sound like things it shouldn’t be able to sound like.”
– Adrian Belew

I can’t do anything but play guitar.”
– Tommy Bolin

“Lean your body forward slightly to support the guitar against your chest, for the poetry of the music should resound in your heart.”
– Andre Segovia

“My vocation is more in composition really than anything else – building up harmonies using the guitar, orchestrating the guitar like an army, a guitar army.”
– Jimmy Page

“Enthusiasm is everything. It must be taut and vibrating like a guitar string.”
– Pele (The Brazilian soccer player.)

“Passing the vodka bottle. And playing the guitar.”
– Keith Richards (His answer to how he stays in good physical shape.)

Shut Up ‘n’ Play Yer Guitar”
– Frank Zappa (Title of one of his albums.)

“I don’t personally know Michael Angelo or his music, but regarding contests and who is faster or whatever, it doesn’t interest me. Trying to determine who picks more notes per second is ridiculous. What is important is the quality of the music and how well it speaks to fans who love it.”
– Yngwie Malmsteen

“The hippest thing you can do is not play at all. Just listen.”
– Lennie Tristano

“I just hate to be in one corner. I hate to be put as only a guitar player, or either only as a songwriter, or only as a tap dancer. I like to move around.”
-Jimi Hendrix

Source:

“Guitar Related Quotes,” How to Become a Guitar Player from Hell, Jason Earls, Pleroma Publications, 2007