It's very demanding to make up your own music.

Out of Coltrane's whole history, there are things which I think are great from all the periods.

It was 100 percent music. There was no ego involved, no attitudes, no black and white, it was pure music.

Names and theoretical things don't occur to me. If they do, I'm not doing my real playing mode.

I always felt as a horn player, a jam session wasn't satisfying enough for me. I should have been a rhythm section player, actually.

I hear many extra-musical things somehow in Coltrane.

I love Indian music very much, but I haven't studied that specifically.

A first love always occupies a special place.

You just keep playing. If someone special comes along and organizes it in a new way, then you'll have another approach and everybody will jump on it to try to learn.

As long as there are people trying to play music in a sincere way, there will be some jazz.

Bernstein grew up in my building in New York. He's a very, very fine player. When he was a kid, he came by to find out what was going on in the world of jazz.

I have been able to get a small audience. It's not the huge audience, but it's enough to make it possible to play. I appreciate that.

Many people do think it's naive to improvise in front of paying customers. I'm not saying one way is better than another.

Sound is the first thing that we tune into.

Most jazz players work out their solos, at least to the extent that they have a very specific vocabulary.

We all learn from each other, and I never really hung out with guys in that way, so I missed out.

A lot of bands were doing remotes from ballrooms around the country.

Benny Goodman was one of the big influences as a clarinet player. That's why I wanted the clarinet.

I could stop and say, Well that was a D minor, G seven, but I really don't want to know that. I just want to know that there's a combination of notes that makes a sound.

It's very demanding to make up your own music.

I just completed a tour in Europe. I played every night. This requires traveling some days for six hours in a van or a train or a car. After six weeks of that, I checked into the hotel and just fell apart.

After playing now for 60 years, it's still very challenging for me to play a simple melody and have it clean and touch the reed at the proper time in the proper way.

I listen to classical music very much. There's a lot of jazz that I don't enjoy listening to.

Labels don't mean anything to me. I'm trying to play as passionately as I'm able to. If they want to call that cool, that's fine. Just spell the name right, is the formula.

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

In some ways Lester Young is the most complex rhythmically of any musician. He does some things which are just phenomenal.

I'd like to feel that whatever I play is a result of whatever I've heard.

I wish that person outside would stop coughing.

When you use music to worship you are not attempting to entertain.

Pop music, disco music, and heavy metal music is about shutting out the tensions of life, putting it away.

When I did the record, I was coming off a time when my contract had been sold and the music industry had changed a lot. I didn't understand how to make records for big labels. I was waiting for a new kind of record label to emerge.

You've got to realize. In the western world, regardless of what color you are, what title the music is, it's all played by the same notes.

Don't make music for some vast, unseen audience or market or ratings share or even for something as tangible as money. Though it's crucial to make a living, that shouldn't be your inspiration. Do it for yourself.

Whether I'm doing music or I'm walking down the street or I'm in a record store buying a record or I walk into a comic store and I'm buying comics or having a drink with my friends, it's the same me.

When rock came along the lyrics and melodies became less important and it bothered me to think that perhaps they might not regain the value they have to music - they are music.

I want to promote poetry to the point where you got all the baldhead kids running around doing poetry, getting the music out of the way and having only words, the spoken word, and then see what happens.

There is no music that can't be used politically, but the motives behind the creation of that music can be non-political.

The kind of music or the kind of arrangements that I do, the kind of musicians I choose, is just what I like to hear.

If not for music, I would probably be a very frustrated scientist. It's one way to answer the question, 'What is the meaning of life?' I feel music answers it better.

Since I'm allergic to various things, the army wouldn't accept me during the war, and I got into the Office of War Information, which sent music to Europe.

My singing is my hobby. It's me and my brother. We just enjoy writing music.

I was determined to carve out a music of my own. I didn't want to copy anybody.

I have tried to make the music a bit easier for them to understand.

What makes my approach special is that I do different things. I do jazz, blues, country music and so forth. I do them all, like a good utility man.

That music and the lyrical aspects of Razorblade Romance is so personal to me that, now with me being grown up a bit and meeting new people and doing new things, it makes me look at the same things I was writing about back in the day through a different colored lens.

The only time I would like to see was the 20s and 30s in America because I love the music and the style and the optimism, I wanted to see New York being built. I wanted to see all that, you know.

My big love was the Beatles. I was more into music.

When we started making electronic music I imagined that the reaction we got from the rock musicians must have been similar to the one the beat groups got from people like my dad.

Uhm, I'm the one wanting the lessons! I don't want to say too much about it because I'd rather have you see the movie, but he's trying to find his music.