Andy Summers Quotes

For me, a great show is when there's a great rapport with the band and the audience, and we're all really into it. The first trick is to bring the audience into the band, break the ice, have a life, and be one, so you can enjoy the next hour and a half together.

You don't want to be so far off the planet that you come out with something that doesn't make sense to anybody.

Death is never more than a breath away from the act of playing music. Each note on a guitar represents a small curve: birth, life, and death-and then you start over.

If you're 20 years old, you've grown up without buying albums.

There was a period when I'd just come out of college where I'd been playing classical guitar and I suddenly realised that it wasn't what I wanted to do with the rest of my life.

If you're a guitarist, you should not be intimidated by using your instrument as a synthesizer, but you shouldn't feel that you have to own one, either.

I am pretty embroiled in moving on and moving forward with music.

I've got four or five records in my head at a time that I try to work on and I would like to do a guitar trio record next - since The Police I've mostly made records with keyboards.

You're on the stage and you've got all those people yelling at you, so you better be right in the moment, reacting to that. It's completely live and organic. Even 20 years later, it's the same thing. You may be even better on your instrument. Hopefully, you are.

If the guitar synthesizer is really going to stand as a synthesizer on its own, it needs to develop a more characteristic sound; I don' think it's gotten there yet.

It accumulates over the years and I've led so many bands of my own now and forced myself into new situations ... You would hope that you play better and better - until you just get too feeble to do it anymore.

You come off of this screaming audience of many, many thousands of people. I used to find it very weird. You have two choices. Either you can stay and pump flesh with hundreds of people after the show, which really gets old, or you can come off stage, get into the car, and go straight out the back and away, back to the hotel.

I like to play with someone who can cover a lot of ground and someone with whom you can discuss the language at a reasonable level; otherwise it gets a bit frustrating.

If I'm playing a violin thing, for instance, I tend to respond to that sound with the way I finger.

What you aim for, in the first place, is to be as good as you can possibly be. This is what I do, and I'm going to try to be the best in the world.

The thing about photography is, some people surround themselves with extremely strong subject matter. And unless you're a moron, you're going to get a really strong photograph.

My favorite sounds are the high, spacey ones that are very ambient.

In The Police, in a trio situation - which I've come back to now - it's just so wide open that it does actually provide this arena where you can play with a certain freedom.

I always have a guitar with me. Actually, I've got several, I play every day. And I enjoy it. I'm never very far away from them. I swear I only ever get a couple days when I'm away from a guitar, and I never like it! There's always one close by, and I play every day. Or I'll be working on something in the studio and play around a bit. It's an extension of me, really.

I'm better for it and I prefer to keep things simple and see what sounds I can get out of my head and hands rather than relying on a sound that someone else created.

I'm just trying to avoid any sort of generic kind of music - I don't want to do generic jazz or fusion.

More recently, I used guitar synthesizer extensively on the two albums I did with Robert Fripp.

I was totally into jazz in my teens.

Ive also just come off a year and a half playing acoustic shows which is fantastic for the hands, and changes your head a little bit.

What I wanted to do was play the guitar but I don't like instrumental rock. I think it is tripe.

It's hard to avoid the past but one goes forward.

The most obvious thing you can't do with a guitar synthesizer is to really sound like a guitar.

To go see a band in a big venue is a difficult experience. I don't really like that too much. I'm not a guy who puts on iTunes and goes, "Oh, what's hot!" I don't need to.

Start with the titles, and then build the music that goes with them.

Of course the playing is important but writing and the establishing of what you are going for is prime too.

I actually think I play better now than I've ever played.

I don't go out much to see bands. I prefer to be on stage.

For me, the guitar synthesizer is a great writing instrument.