Brian May Guitar Quotes & Sayings

It's really funny, I think to myself ... I've got my same guitar and amp, it's just a bigger room now! Some things don't change. — Brian Setzer

Basically, Sam Phillips recorded Bill Haley, Johnny Cash, and all those other Memphis guys; Chuck Berry played the top two strings; Elvis appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show above the waist; the Beatles made all the girls squirm by singing about wanting to hold their "hands"; Ray Davies got lost in a sunset; Pete Townshend smashed his guitar; Brian Wilson heard magic in his head and made it come out of a studio; the Rolling Stones urinated on a garage door; and then (skipping a bit) you've got Joey Levine and Chapman-Chinn and Mott the Hoople and Iggy and the Runaways and KISS and the Pink Fairies and Rick Nielsen and Jonathan Richman and Johnny Ramone and Lemmy and the Young brothers and Cook and Jones and Pete Shelley and Feargal Sharkey and Rob Halford ... and Foghat. You get what I'm saying. It didn't happen in a vacuum, but it did happen, and now here we are in the aftermath. — Frank Portman

I'd put a lot of work into playing guitar, and was thinking I was pretty damn good. But Hendrix came along and destroyed everyone. — Brian May

We just got a tour bus. I didn't know tour buses could be this nice. It's just me, Brian Haner the guitar guy, the tour manager and a writer. We laugh ourselves silly. Apparently we're going to have a road dog, a miniature pincher. It's the smallest they've ever seen. How masculine am I going to look, working with dolls and a miniature dog? — Jeff Dunham

I've always lived in that guitar world. I have noticed kids being more into the real essence of guitar music now. — Brian May

I'm tired of being around men all the time. I'm going to start a band called Skirt with three girls and I'll play the guitar and sing backing vocals in drag. I went window shopping when I was in New York, saw a lot of amazing dresses. — Brian Molko

You just make different music on a computer. And you can make wonderful music on a computer, but don't pretend that the machinery is transparent. It makes as much difference to what you're doing as it does if you play an acoustic guitar as opposed to a kettledrum. You're not going to make the same music. — Brian Eno

I had this big thing about guitar harmonies. I wanted to be the first to put proper three-part harmonies onto a record. That was an achievement. — Brian May

The guitar has a kind of grit and excitement possessed by nothing else. — Brian May

I like the sound of a Silvertone amp for myself. It's kind of cleaner guitar sounds when necessary, maybe a little less metal-sounding. But it really doesn't matter what amp I play through; it's really the way I voice chords and play guitar, how I strike the strings. — Brian Bell

The Marshall guitar amplifier doesn't just get louder when you turn it up. It distorts the sound to produce a whole range of new harmonics, effectively turning a plucked string instrument into a bowed one. — Brian Eno

My mum says I wanted to be a surgeon, but I don't remember that. I think from the time I knew what was happening, I wanted to be a guitar player. — Brian May

If you buy a DVD you have a copy. If you want a backup copy you buy another one. — Jack Valenti

It almost seems that if you can describe it, you can change it. — Ross Bleckner

I had this idea ... I wanted the sound to sing and have that thickness but yet still have an edge so that it could articulate. So my dad and I designed the guitar ... the one that was made from an old fireplace. — Brian May

Someone who has come through heartache and maintains wit and charm is far more interesting than someone who has been kept on a pedestal all her life. — Jess Michaels

The guitar was my weapon, my shield to hide behind. — Brian May

I'm pretty basic as far as technique is concerned. I don't use many gadgets, and I like the sound my guitar makes, anyway. — Brian May

Sometimes if the guitar is the last thing to go on, it's very fresh. — Brian May

,,, all around it would have to be Eddie Cochran, because it wasn't just music with him; it was his guitar playing, his look, his singing, I'd say that, all things considered, he's probably my favorite "cat" of all time — Brian Setzer

If you give to get something, you're not giving, you're trading. Your motives are second in importance only to your actions — Jose Silva Jr.

I didn't want to take the guitar solos down note-for-note, but more or less use them as a map, and keep all the hooks from the guitar playing, and let myself come through. — Brian Setzer

My D'Angelico is a jazz archtop guitar. That guitar was made for Glenn Miller's guitar player in 1939. It's a '39 D'Angelico New Yorker. — Brian Setzer

They had straddled the British trenches, 'crushing the sides of our own trench out of shape with their machine-guns swivelling around and firing like mad.' Their commanding officer furiously rained blows on the side of one of them with his staff cane, trying to get them to stop. Nobody knew what they were, except that they were British. 'There was a bulge on each side with the door in the bulging part,' observed Chaney, 'and machine-guns on swivels poked out from either side. — Robert Kershaw

To me, any character that is conflicted inside as well as outside of themselves is always a better role to play. — Brent Sexton

My guitar only has five strings 'cause the top one broke and I decided not to put it back on: when I play chords I only play bar chords, and the top one always used to cut me there. — Brian Eno

One could do with a longer year - so much to do, so little done, alas. — Rose Macaulay

I had worked in politics with Johnson and Nixon before becoming a historian and biographer. I kept discovering these dirtier, murkier threads in American politics that led back to Vegas' gambling interests and criminal connections. — Roger Morris

I tend not to write on guitar very often. I tend to start off with keyboards. — Brian May

At each increase of knowledge, as well as on the contrivance of every new tool, human labour becomes abridged. — Charles Babbage

The silence was suddenly too much. He hit the CD button on the car's radio. Brian Jones's sitar riff opened for Charlie Watts tribal-like drumbeat thundering from the speakers. Keith Richards' jangly guitar joined in, followed by Mick singing about seeing a red door that he wanted to paint black. — Glenn Rolfe

Please. Do me this one, great favor, Jones. If ever you hear anyone, when you are back home ... if ever you hear anyone speak of the East," and here his voice plummeted a register, and the tone was full and sad, "hold your judgment. If you are told 'they are all this' or 'they do this' or 'their opinions are these,' withhold your judgment until all the facts are upon you. Because that land they call 'India' goes by a thousand names and is populated by millions, and if you think you have found two men the same among that multitude, then you are mistaken. It is merely a trick of the moonlight. — Zadie Smith

Lord Shiva, you my sunshine, my soul, Sivoham. — Usha Cosmico

My favorite guitar players are Chuck Berry and Brian May and Dave Davies from the Kinks. — Brittany Howard

Touring with Brian May was like a dream come true that happened early in my career. He inspired me with the way he harmonized and layered his guitar sounds. — Gary Hoey

Texting is very loose in its structure. No one thinks about capital letters or punctuation when one texts, but then again, do you think about those things when you talk? — John McWhorter

I always use the same guitar; I got this guitar years and years ago for nine pounds. It's still got the same strings on it. — Brian Eno

The appeal of many conspiracy theories depends on the misunderstanding of this logic. That is, it depends on confusing the probability that a series of events would happen if it were the product of a huge conspiracy with the probability that a huge conspiracy exists if a series of events occurs. — Leonard Mlodinow

Whatever you now find weird, ugly, uncomfortable and nasty about a new medium will surely become its signature. CD distortion, the jitteriness of digital video, the crap sound of 8-bit - all of these will be cherished and emulated as soon as they can be avoided. It's the sound of failure: so much modern art is the sound of things going out of control, of a medium pushing to its limits and breaking apart. The distorted guitar sound is the sound of something too loud for the medium supposed to carry it. The blues singer with the cracked voice is the sound of an emotional cry too powerful for the throat that releases it. The excitement of grainy film, of bleached-out black and white, is the excitement of witnessing events too momentous for the medium assigned to record them. — Brian Eno

The first twelve years are the hardest. — Franklin D. Roosevelt

Every time I listen to Jeff Beck my whole view of guitar changes radically. He's way, way out, doing things you never expect. — Brian May