Electric Guitar Quotes

JENKINS AND VIRGIL walked back up the valley to the Ruff house, and found Muddy inside, tootling on a black electric guitar, a complex ~ John Sandford

I was interested in the electric guitar even before I knew the difference between electric and acoustic. The electric guitar seemed to be a totally fascinating plank of wood with knobs and switches on it. I just had to have one. ~ Jeff Beck

I've just been recording mostly acoustic stuff, drums, and sax, and electric guitar. I'm just still writing songs and what not. ~ Phillip Phillips

I always write from rhythm first, so if I need a song fast, I have to start there. Then I just threw some electric guitar at it. ~ Erin McKeown

I've always loved the electric guitar: to hold it and work it and hear what it does is unreal. ~ David Lynch

If Heaven was a summer sky and a TV left on mute, then the Underworld was a starry night and an electric guitar with amps. ~ Charity Parkerson

The first time I tried to write was when I was 14, after I got an electric guitar. I put a song together, and it wasn't that bad! The writing came natural to me. ~ Tom Petty

...Liam had been in the driver's seat, singing along to Derek and the Dominos' "Layla" at the top of his lungs, so off-key that it had even Chubs laughing. Zu had been sitting right behind him, moving in time with the music, her entire body rocking out to the wailing electric guitar... ~ Alexandra Bracken

I do some solo, acoustic stuff, but I also like plugging in my electric guitar and playing loud with a band. ~ James Bay

I heard the Beatles and the Stones, and Mom bought me an electric guitar. I played lead for four years and then switched to bass. One day someone suggested that I should sing, so I sheepishly stepped up to the microphone and the rest is rock history. ~ Glenn Hughes

Garcia had traded his Sears electric guitar for an acoustic model shortly after arriving in Palo Alto, and late that spring Barbara bought him a better guitar, and shortly after that, a lovely sounding Stella twelve-string. ~ Blair Jackson

They make this drink in Brazil Called cachaca. It's sugar can alcholho. Costs 35 cents a quart. One quart of that stuff and you see God. Two quarts and you graow a pair of tight pants and an electric guitar. ~ David Lee Roth

In oddball places, the electric guitar has been taken as an almost alien object - this weird, six-stringed instrument that fell down to earth and was then played loud but with traditional grace and intelligence ~ Ry Cooder

There was a dark aura about him, a hint of caged power in that deceptively casual, sprawled poise. Danger personified.
If this had been a film she would have expected to hear the warning wail of an electric guitar creep over the soft background bustle of the city. ~ Heather R. Blair

Some people train for certain sports and I want to train to be able to hold a super heavy electric guitar and carry luggage around myself because I always have to have 7,000 pairs of shoes. Who cares about sports? ~ Lisa Loeb

When I was 15 years old, my cousin and I formed a singing group called The Altaires. And, because we became the most popular singing group in the Tri-State area, the rest of the group convinced me I should play the guitar - even though I didn't own one! So what happened was, my stepfather actually made my first electric guitar for me for $23! ~ George Benson

If it works for the piece of music, I'm going to use it. I don't want to be limited any more than [Bob] Dylan wanted to be limited by not using an electric guitar. ~ Linda Perhacs

I suppose I am a frustrated musician so I annoy my family by playing guitar in the house. I used to be into acoustic stuff but my son Joseph is learning drums, so now I have an electric guitar and we play Metallica. We have an amp and a PA in the garage with his drum kit. ~ Kevin McKidd

If I sit down with an electric guitar, what's going to come out are Sabbath/Zeppelin type riffs, but if I'm sitting behind a piano late at night, I might write something like 'Desperado.' You're not going to write 'Desperado' between a wall of Marshalls and thumping, crushing volume. ~ Zakk Wylde

Those original, black, spirited, defiant, rebellious musical masters. Chuck Berry was one of the first masters of Les Paul's new electric guitar; he pretty much laid down the gauntlet, and I don't think anybody's ever beat him since. Way before the British Invasion, I was tuned into the black guys that created the British Invasion. Without Howlin' Wolf, Muddy Waters, Robert Johnson, Lightnin' Hopkins, Bo Diddley, Chuck Berry and the Motown hits, there would be no Beatles. ~ Ted Nugent

If I were a 13-year-old and I wanted to create subversive art, I wouldn't go out and buy an electric guitar. I'd get myself a personal computer. ~ Thomas Dolby

Because everyone is still treating me with kid gloves, Pigpen's driving me in his pickup truck, blasting music that's more screaming than music. I prefer electric guitar over voices, but it's not my fucking truck. ~ Katie McGarry

I started playing bluegrass with my family, so there were the G, C and D chords. I was playing a Martin acoustic because that's what Carter Stanley of the Stanley Brothers played. Then I got into the really raw blues of Hound Dog Taylor and started on electric guitar. ~ Dan Auerbach

If I look at my own recordings, I think generally there is a focal point within the song and often it's the instrumental bridge or a guitar solo where we try to do something unexpected, something beautiful or weird, or beautiful because it is weird. And of course I fail half the time, but yes that is the goal, to create even a few seconds of bliss, or sadness. The electric guitar is a great instrument for doing this because it is capable of surprising you. There are so many different sounds available. ~ Dean Wareham

[Bob] Dylan began to incorporate things into that scene that were controversial then. He got shouted at in Newport when he played electric guitar, for instance. There was a certain purity that was sought among those people. ~ T Bone Burnett

The next day I picked up my electric guitar and amp at a tag sale. Grandma Dotty loves tag sales, and somehow she managed to bargain with the guy who was selling them, until we paid just three dollars ~ James Patterson

On a distant battlefield, somewhere in the Middle East, Sergeant Jackson is sick of this fucking war and stands up from behind the trench he's hiding in, ignores the pleas of his squad mates to get down and starts to play the electric guitar he's insisted he bring into battle with him. He plays a song: his father's favourite. He's spent years learning it and he thinks it's beautiful. The first bullet kills him. Someone takes a picture as he falls. A dying soldier clutching his electric guitar. ~ Pleasefindthis

I went to my friend's house one day, and he had an electric guitar he had just bought with a tiny little amp. I turned the volume up to 10 and I hit one chord, and I said, I'm in love. ~ Ace Frehley

Sometimes I did feel like I came from a different tribe. I was not like my outgoing, ironic dad or my tough-chick mom. And as if to seal the deal, instead of learning to play electric guitar, I'd gone and chosen the cello. ~ Gayle Forman

Once I picked up an electric guitar, I lost interest in piano, and I just wanted to rock. I studied piano for so long, I got burned out on it. ~ Juliana Hatfield

What was remarkable was that associating with a computer and electronics company was the best way for a rock band to seem hip and appeal to young people. Bono later explained that not all corporate sponsorships were deals with the devil. "Let's have a look," he told Greg Kot, the Chicago Tribune music critic. "The 'devil' here is a bunch of creative minds, more creative than a lot of people in rock bands. The lead singer is Steve Jobs. These men have helped design the most beautiful art object in music culture since the electric guitar. That's the iPod. The job of art is to chase ugliness away. ~ Walter Isaacson

I'm a human being, I'm a friend, I'm a mom, I'm a writer, and I'm an artist. I do play electric guitar and all of that, but in the end, I'm just a person. ~ Patti Smith

I consider the electric guitar to be like a drum with strings. It became the drum of the Baby Boom generation. And the drum has always been the center of the tribe, a new electronic tribe. ~ John Trudell

If the person who can effectively sanction ill-conceived wars can play the electric guitar, which is a symbol of rebellion, then that whole worldview becomes confused. ~ Steve Coogan

You know, there's times when you should play and there's times when you gotta hold back. ~ Steve Vai

Playing an unamplified electric guitar is like strumming on a picnic table. ~ Dave Barry

I don't touch electric guitars. It's just not my thing - I stick with acoustic guitars only. ~ Dave Matthews

The use of electronics is a natural extension of the instrument - it is an electric guitar. So we guitarists have been plugging into something since 1931, and we are not about to stop now. Current advances in technology means we can have a huge array of sounds at our fingertips, and this offers amazing possibilities to the contemporary composer. It is always a guitar (I don't play synthesizer) but it becomes something else all together - more like sculpting sound in real time using metal wires, 5 fingers and a pick. ~ Tim Brady

I do the protest stuff. I do country and western. I play both acoustic and electric guitar in a lot of different styles, from loud, psychedelic stuff to quiet finger-picking. ~ Eugene Chadbourne

Vitaly owns half a carton of Lucky Strikes, an electric guitar, and a hangover ~ Neal Stephenson

I even played bass for a while. Besides playing electric guitar, I'd also get asked to play some acoustic stuff. But, since I didn't have an acoustic guitar at the time, I used to borrow one from a friend so I could play folk joints. ~ Mark Knopfler

Swinging at daisies is like playing electric guitar with a tennis racket: if it were that easy, we could all be Jerry Garcia. The ball changes everything. ~ Michael Bamberger

I wanted to be an actor, an astrologer, an astronaut; a lot of different things were going through my mind. But I also wanted to play guitar. I mentioned to my parents that I wanted an electric guitar for Christmas. They got me one! I sat there all Christmas morning making a lot of loud horrible noise. ~ Joan Jett

I suppose when I started playing guitar, it was the means to an end. I never thought of myself as a fully fledged guitar instrumentalist. And my early excursions on the electric guitar were curtailed when Eric Clapton came on the scene, and I decided I was never going to be in the same arena as a Clapton or a Peter Green. ~ Ian Anderson

He also got two black sweaters he might actually wear, some Avon cologne in a bottle shaped like an electric guitar, and an empty key ring - which his dad made sure everybody noticed. ~ Rainbow Rowell

Let's be realistic about this, the guitar can be the single most blasphemous device on the face of the earth. That's why I like it ... The disgusting stink of a too-loud electric guitar: now that's my idea of a good time. ~ Frank Zappa

I was bought an electric guitar when I was 12, but my guitar teacher beat me up. I didn't like guitar lessons and I got quite bored. My teacher was obviously bored giving me lessons, and one day I offered him a liquorice toffee, but he didn't answer. So I threw it at him, it hit him in the face, and he sort of beat me up. ~ Simon Cowell

If your going to learn to play lead guitar, get an electric guitar .. it doesn't have to be an expensive one .. acoustic guitars aren't good for learning lead, because you can't play up very high on the neck and they take heavier-gauge strings which makes it hard to bend notes ~ Eddie Van Halen

There are some superficial things that connect me to the stream. There's instrumentation, there's timbre, use of electronics, the way that samples are used, the way the electric guitar is used. I'm thinking of things that are particular to this era. But I don't always feel particularly close to the music of my peers. I often feel that I have more in common with writers and visual artists. I try to connect to people in an emotional kind of way. ~ Missy Mazzoli

Being 16 years old and getting an electric guitar is never going to get old. There's always going to be kids making music. There's always going to be kids in bands. ~ Dan Auerbach

As much as I love acoustic Neil Young - and I do deeply - I may be more passionate about the electric. Luckily it's not a contest, and we never have to make that choice. But Neil Young on an electric guitar - I feel like I've never seen or heard anything like it. ~ Jonathan Demme

I've made my own music, and the way I've always described it is Peggy Lee with an electric guitar, or Billie Holiday with some PJ Harvey in there. ~ Evan Rachel Wood

My dad was vehemently opposed to electric guitars. He did not look on that kind of music as legitimate in any way. ~ Dan Fogelberg

If T-Bone Walker had been a woman, I would have asked him to marry me. I'd never heard anything like that before: single-string blues played on an electric guitar. ~ B.B. King

I was an original Elvis fan. He was the voice of my generation. I was listening to him on the radio when he released his great Sun records with Scotty Moore on electric guitar and Bill Black on bass. ~ Ronnie Milsap

Well, I have been playing electric guitar all these years and acoustic was something new to me. ~ Gary Moore

She moves a little closer, brushing against my hip, and an electric charge runs through me. ~ Karen M. McManus

My dad wanted me to play when I was a kid, so I learned to play the guitar. I pursued a career in music because I love it so much and I enjoy what it does to those who hear it. ~ Randy Travis

I get a feeling, on a guitar, and I sort of mess around until something resonates with me, and then I just find that what happens is that a melody comes, and with that, words. ~ Beth Orton

They all seemed hungry, happy, and healthy enough in their buzzing - oh the days were hot, and the noise of bees filled the air that was dusty with pollen and sun haze, and there were tiny black flies stuck to one another crowded by the creek and a creek stink rising from the deep pool under the willow tree where a wheat sack of new kittens had been drowned, and their tiny terrible struggling had shot like an electric current through the confusion of muddy water and up the arm of the person who had tied the stone around the mouth of the sack and thrust it into the water; and the culprit had not been able to brush away the current; it penetrated her body and made her heart beat with fear and pity. I was the culprit. ~ Janet Frame

He took it all too far, but boy could he play guitar. ~ David Bowie

Liberty! -- Electric word! ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe

player hummed for a second, then sweet sad acoustic guitar filled the air, arpeggiated cascades that transformed the cramped space of the room. The voice that followed was smoky and haunting, filled with loss: ~ John Skipp

She was wearing a skirt and a big-shouldered jacket of a royal blue that was fashionable in France, a blue-and-white-striped silk blouse, and electric-blue lizard pumps with white calf caps on the toes. ~ Tom Wolfe

Just as with a guitar, you can improvise a guitar solo, and they'd probably be similar each time, but they won't be exactly the same. With the word, it's probably a bit freer than that. I probably repeat myself more musically than I do verbally. ~ Robyn Hitchcock

I'm like a bad musical cliche because I bring my guitar on the road and try to write songs in hotel rooms. ~ Moby

You don't have to play a whole lot of guitar to be a good blues player. Some people plays too much guitar. Stack it on top of each other the way it don't - you're working too fast. Blues not supposed to be played fast. Blues supposed to be played slow. You could kill a man with just one chord. ~ David Edwards

Cars have a large engine in the front and you have a gearbox, which is cumbersome. Electric cars don't have this problem. The motor is much smaller, the battery is below you. This will allow you to play with different shapes. ~ Carlos Ghosn

At the end of '69 I did a gig with Jean Luc Ponty here in L.A. He was an electric violinist. ~ George Duke

I don't want to discredit people's opinions of me, but you talk about the violin or the cello or lead guitar where you have to learn tons of chords, that's much more difficult. ~ Bonnie Raitt

It took me 20 years to learn I couldn't tune too well. And by that time I was too rich to care. ~ Chet Atkins

Outside the plate glass the world in the mist had become a pencil drawing executed in a dozen different grays with, here and there, a smudge of electric red or pure white. ~ Neil Gaiman

I just couldn't take school seriously: I had this guitar neck with four frets which I kept hidden under the desk. It had strings on it so I would practice my chord shapes under the desk and that's about all I did at school. ~ Alvin Lee

I bet a chef could get more pussy than a guitar player right now. ~ Roy Choi

I played a guitar with a file, and a synthesizer. ~ Jean-Michel Basquiat

Customer expectations? Nonsense. No customer ever asked for the electric light, the pneumatic tire, the VCR, or the CD. All customer expectations are only what you and your competitor have led him to expect. He knows nothing else. ~ W. Edwards Deming

Invest yourself in everything you do. There's fun in being serious. ~ John Coltrane

I can't play guitar, but I can sure make it howl. ~ John Lennon

I think I'm a songwriter. I grab an instrument to make my body a song, but I'm not a player as such, maybe a little more on guitar, but certainly not piano. ~ P.J. Harvey

They were married by a lesbian justice of the peace while their friends played a guitar-feedback-heavy version of the "Wedding March." The bride wore a white-fringed flapper dress and black spiked boots. The groom wore leather. ~ Gayle Forman

It was really hard to find people to come over and play guitar and sing and write songs together. So that turned me into a songwriter that way, just so I could be able to play with other people. ~ Jack White

After i had escaped, the police had so persistently and brutally badgered my mother that she had had a heart attack. What they had done to Evelyn was beyond belief. I understood why Evelyn had reacted to my call the way she did. At one time, Evelyn's office telephone had ten intercepts on it. She and my mother had received phony notes in my handwriting. They had received telephone calls with my voice telling them to "come to the spot and bring some money." They had found electric eyes and all kinds of other devices in and around their houses. ~ Assata Shakur

My earliest musical memory was getting to watch my dad play drums in a local band. He's a banker by trade, but a drummer at heart. I remember seeing the guitar player do the solo from "Werewolves of London" with his teeth, and that was the moment that had me hooked. ~ Charlie Worsham

During the 1950s, I decided, as did many others, that many practical problems were beyond analytic solution and that simulation techniques were required. At RAND, I participated in the building of large logistics simulation models; at General Electric, I helped build models of manufacturing plants. ~ Harry Markowitz

I want every girl in the world to pick up a guitar and start screaming. ~ Courtney Love

With music, I'm comfortable singing to people but I'm not that comfortable playing the guitar. ~ Bronson Arroyo

I had a dream about you. We were in a band. I was the lead singer, guitar player, saxophonist, harpist, violinist, bassist, cellist, harmonica player, pianist, and drummer. Oh, and I played the trumpet. And you, you had the important role - you played air guitar. I feel this dream accurately reflects me as an unselfish person, willing to stand in the shade so someone else might enjoy the spotlight and get all the glory. ~ Jarod Kintz

If I learned to play guitar it was so that I would have something to sing to, if I learned to write a song it was so that I would have something to sing. So the gut feeling you're talking about comes from singing and communicating the lyrics and what it is that we feel. ~ Brandi Carlile

The first record I bought was a Carl Perkins record, because I saw him at The Festival at Sandpoint, Idaho. I loved Elvis and I found out that he wrote 'Blue Suede Shoes' ... so connecting that experience of going to see him play was pretty awesome. That's when I realised I wanted to play guitar. ~ Josh Homme