There have been many legendary and influential guitarists during the past century including Django Reinhardt, Chuck Berry, Jeff Beck, Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton and Eddie Van Halen. The list goes on and on. These are some of the things they, and others, said to the media:
'If you look at the neck of my guitar you'll see that some frets are worn down much more than others. When all of the frets become worn evenly, then I guess I'll know I've played and learned enough to call myself a great guitarist'.
'..My music is so much mathematics, it's pathetic. Anything offbeat has to get back on the beat, or the whole thing is going to be out of time. So, with most of my music I keep the band on 4/4 time, and I take the deviations. It's simple to teach 4/4 time. It's hard to teach deviations.. you know... dotted quarter notes and so forth. So, I give my band the basics and I take the variations, as I should I suppose. That's the reason why I'm out there seeming to deviate from the basic beat but I gotta make sure that at the end of my lead fill... well, I better be back on time.'.
When an interviewer introduced him as the 'greatest guitarist in the world', Jimi Hendrix replied:
'..No man, I'm only the greatest guitarist sitting in this chair'.
'..I want my music to be like a prayer. It's not about me, it about the spirit in the music'.
'..yeah I built my own guitar when I was 14. I made it out of a cigar box but then I progressed and made a better one... I cut a front and back out of plywood and made steam-rounded sides, glued it all together - my old man threw it out in the garden because I had a row with him. Busted it. And I had so little money, and playing guitar was the thing I wanted to do so much. I went to the guitar shop and waited until the place was packed and I nicked one of the new pickups right out of the shop. It sold for about 2 quid but oh boy, I didn't care if I got thrown in jail.. I had my pickup. There was a little hole cut in the guitar that had been waiting for that pickup for eight months, and it fit perfectly because I had already got the dimensions from a plan.. and it just slipped into that hole and oh boy! I was king!'
'When I'm not on the road with the Stones I'm a bit of a home body, but I do get a lot of people dropping by at all times of the day and night. Late one night, it must have been about 4:00 a.m., there was a knock on my door and when I answered it, Stevie (Ray Vaughn) was standing there like it was mid-afternoon. This was in the autumn and it was a bit cold and Stevie wasn't wearing a coat or jacket, but he had his guitar strung around his neck and the first words out of his mouth were, “Hey Ronnie... d'ya wanna jam?”'
'It's always a Catch-22 situation. They hate you if you're the same, and they hate you if you're different.'
'..People say I'm a great guitarist but when I'm not allowing my head to get big I realise there's still a lot I have to learn. For example, if you look at the neck of my guitar you'll see that some frets are worn down much more than others. I guess when all of the frets on my guitar become worn evenly, then I'll know I've played and learned enough to call myself a great guitarist'.
'The blues is sorta like Southern cooking. It may not have all of the ingredients, so you got to be a very good chef.'
'I took lessons for about one year and stopped because it wasn't teaching me how to play music.'
'Anything you've ever heard comes out in what you play.'
'Energy is what you need in rock 'n' roll. Energy and three chords.'
'I never felt like I ever played a note for the money.'
'It's the music that kept us all intact...kept us from going crazy. You should have two radios in case one gets broken.'
'Knowledge speaks, but wisdom listens.'
'(Spinal)Tap is like the weather, we'll always be there. And like the weather, we won't always be good.'
'My strength is my determination. I just want to keep getting better. I want people to know me as a guitar player, the way I knew other people.'
'Our audience is like people who like licorice. Not everybody likes licorice, but the people who like licorice, really like licorice.'
'Rhythm and blues had a baby, and they named it rock and roll.'
'A painter paints pictures on canvas, but musicians paint their pictures on silence.'
'There is more stupidity than hydrogen in the universe, and it has a longer shelf life.'