Rock and roll ain't nothing but jazz with a hard backbeat.
Keith RichardsRead
There's just certain styles of playing that you do play in your own way. Maybe it's in the way your fingers bend, for all I know. And so whenever you pick up the guitar it's not so much the sound of the instrument itself, it's like the ting that you add onto it-the attitude.
Interpretation
Individual expression is key in artistry, as it's the unique perspective and attitude that truly shapes the outcome.
This quote emphasizes the idea that creativity and personal style are what set an artist apart. While the tools and instruments may be the same, it is the unique interpretation and attitude of the individual that transforms the art, making it uniquely theirs. In music, as in many arts, the essence of the creation stems from the artist's personal touch and emotional input.
In practice
To inspire musicians at a workshop about improvisation.
Rock and roll ain't nothing but jazz with a hard backbeat.
Everyone talks about rock these days; the problem is they forget about the roll.
If you've gotta think about being cool, you ain't cool.
If you don't know the blues... there's no point in picking up the guitar and playing rock and roll or any other form of popular music.
There's something beautifully friendly and elevating about a bunch of guys playing music together. This wonderful little world that is unassailable. It's really teamwork, one guy supporting the others, and it's all for one purpose, and there's no flies in the ointment, for a while. And nobody conducting, it's all up to you. It's really jazz__that's the big secret. Rock and roll ain't nothing but jazz with a hard backbeat.
When you're supported by millions all over the world, you can either go nuts, or try to feed off the goodwill.
I grew up watching period dramas, as we all did in the 1980s and '90s - endless adaptations of Jane Austen and Charles Dickens - and I loved them. But I never saw anyone like me in them, so I decided to find a story to erode the excuses for me not doing one.
So much of what I create has been due to the influence of Miles Davis and Donald Byrd, and so many of those that have passed on. Their music, their legacy lives on with the rest of us because we are so highly influenced by their experience and what they have given us.
Sometimes you stumble across a few chords that put you in a reflective place.
Film buffs who don't live in Hollywood have a fantasy about what it's like to be a director. Movies and the people who make movies have such glamour associated with them. But the truth is, it's not like that. It's very different. It's hard work.
Piece by piece, I fed my wardrobe to the night wind, and flutteringly, like a loved one’s ashes, the gray scraps were ferried off, to settle here, there, exactly where I would never know, in the dark heart of New York.
[Lee Morgan] was the only young cat that scared me when he played. He had so much fire and natural feeling. I had more technique, but he had that feeling. People seemed to like him more than they like me at the beginning.
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