Quotes & Sayings About Electric Guitar

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

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

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

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

If I could play an instrument, it would probably be a cello or an electric guitar. — Jeff VanderMeer

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

[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

I'm never really comfortable at parties. Maybe I'm just not the partying type.
... I think it's because I'm never sure what to do with myself.
I mean, there're drinks, but I don't like being drunk ... There's music, but I never really learned to dance to anything that involved an electric guitar. There are people to talk to ... but once you put all the stupid things I do aside, I'm really not that interesting. I like reading, staying home, going on walks with my dog ... Who wants to hear about that? Especially when I would have to scream it over music to which no one dances.
So I'm there but not drinking, listening to music but not dancing, and trying to have conversations with near-strangers about anything other than my own stupid life ... Leads to a lot of awkward pauses. And then I start wondering why I showed up in the first place.
Cold Days (The Dresden Files Book 14), pg. 33 — Jim Butcher

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

A horn has that voice quality, and an electric guitar can emulate that. But playing an acoustic, the notes don't sustain like that. — Bill Orcutt

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

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

The feedback from the speakers changes and begins blasting death metal music so loudly into the sky that I swear the bridge suspensions are vibrating.
The twins were in charge of the music selection.
I catch sight of them on the side of the bridge, each with an arm raised, holding up their forefingers and pinkies in a devil sign, head-banging to the beat. They're mouthing the words to the garbled voice screaming over the intense electric guitar and drums blasting out of the speakers. They might look pretty badass if it weren't for their hobo clown outfits.
It's the loudest party the Bay Area has ever heard. — Susan Ee

I sit around and play acoustic guitar - usually acoustic, sometimes electric, occasionally piano, but more often guitar, just trying to come up with tunes. Ideas kind of pop into your head. — Colin Hay

I've always been at war with the guitar. All vocalists are fighting a war with the electric rhythm guitar. — Nick Cave

My first band was an Argentinian folk group when I was 10. When I was 12 I had my electric guitar, and by the time I was 13, the Beatles came into the scene, and that was over. So I have a mixture of all these traditions, and I think that's who I am, a mixture of everything. — Gustavo Santaolalla

Charlie Christians' contributions to the electric guitar are as big as Thomas Edisons' contributions to the world ... — Barney Kessel

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

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

Around age 11 or 12, I started playing jazz bass. From there, I went to electric bass and then guitar, which I kept up for a long time. — Joshua Roman

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

My cousin gave me a twin-neck electric guitar for one of my birthdays. It was amazing. Even though it was mine, I was never allowed to pick it up. — Sam Palladio

One thing I really hate about people who play both acoustic and electric is if they try to play electric style on an acoustic guitar. You must develop it as a totally different thing. — Rory Gallagher

We feared that the music which had given us sustenance was in danger of spiritual starvation. We feared it losing its sense of purpose, we feared it falling into fattened hands, we feared it floundering in a mire of spectacle, finance, and vapid technical complexity. We would call forth in our minds the image of Paul Revere, riding through the American night, petitioning the people to wake up, to take up arms. We too would take up arms, the arms of our generation, the electric guitar and the microphone. — Patti Smith

Sometimes [people] seem to think I came out of the womb, you know, cursing, with an electric guitar. — Patti Smith

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

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

Can you imagine a guy breaking into your car, and he steals your guitar case 'cause he thinks it's a guitar, and he gets it home and opens it up and there's a rake inside it, an electric toilet plunger and a dog skull? That actually happened. — Eugene Chadbourne

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

First of all, who's your A&R?
A mountain climber who plays an electric guitar?
But he don't know the meaning of dope,
When he's lookin for a suit and tie rap
That's cleaner than a bar of soap!
And I'm the dirtiest thing in sight,
Matter of fact, bring out the girls and let's have a mud fight. — GZA

As jazz fans, it was amusing for us to play jazz harmonies on these big, ugly electric guitars. — Donald Fagen

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

We play loud electric guitar music, and we'd hope that that doesn't mean you have to act like an asshole. — Ian MacKaye

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

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

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

For an electric guitarist to solo effectively on an acoustic guitar you need to develop tricks to avoid the expectation of sustain that comes from playing electrics. Try cascades, for example. Drop arpeggios over open strings, and let the open strings sing as you pick with your fingers. It's kind of a country style of playing, but it works very well in-between heavily strummed parts and fingered lead lines. — Pete Townshend

My stepfather had an electric guitar. He went to his pawn store one day to get a guitar and an amp, and I couldn't understand what I was hearing. All afternoon, I just sat against the amp and let it reverberate through me. Something must have stuck. — George Benson

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

The classical guitar has a dynamic to it unlike a regular acoustic guitar or an electric guitar. You know, there's times when you should play and there's times when you gotta hold back. It's an extremely dynamic instrument. — Steve Vai

And a lot of the technique and the little T-Bone phrases that define his style, Chuck Berry, when he rearranged the beat, they became rock 'n roll guitar licks. So in essence, T-Bone was not only the first electric blues guitar player, but he was the first electric rock 'n roll guitar player, really. — Duke Robillard

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 got my first guitar when I was 11. It was an electric, and I can remember just wanting to be Avril Lavigne! But I got annoyed with having to plug it in and play with amps and pedals and stuff. Then I got given a cheap acoustic, a Tanglewood, and I thought it was awesome because I could play it anywhere! — Gabrielle Aplin

EverTune is, without a doubt, the most important advance in guitar playing since the electric tuner. Using the EverTune, both onstage and in the studio, has completely changed the game. It's almost impossible to explain how amazing this innovation is. Pure magic! — Ben Weinman

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

Technology was something I avoided when I started out - I didn't even have electric guitars. Only played acoustic. — Beck

The kids cheered every time the lights went on and a spotlight revealed Jimmy [Page] bowing his electric guitar, eliciting stygian growls and demonic shrieks, as if to draw the Dark One from his lair in hell. Invariably, some of the more astute of Led Zeppelin's listeners realized that what they were watching was in part a magic show. — Stephen Davis

On acoustic guitar I tend to stay in the key of D for some reason. On electric guitar I keep basic: C, G, D, and A. The key of D minor is also real good for me. — Tommy Shaw

I firmly believe if you want to be a guitar player, you better start on acoustic and then graduate to electric. Don't think you're going to be Townshend or Hendrix just because you can go wee wee wah wah, and all the electronic tricks of the trade. First you've got to know that fucker. And you go to bed with it. If there's no babe around, you sleep with it. She's just the right shape. — Keith Richards

My Portuguese uncle had a Portuguese version of a ukulele. The family would pull it out after dinner and play Portuguese folk songs on it. I couldn't wait for him to finish so I could get my hands on it. I was seven or eight years old. And he used to have a Fender amp in his house and an electric guitar. I would spend hours making sounds. — Joe Perry

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

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

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

This was different. It had synths droning and sending saltwater waves under my feet. It had drumbeats bursting like fireworks, rumbling the furniture out of place, and then a crazy, irregular, disharmonious, spiral crescendo of pure electric noise, like a typhoon dragging our bodies into it. It featured brass orchestras and choirs of mermaids and a piano in Iceland, all of them right there, visible, touchable, in Axton House. It shook us, fucked us, suspended us far above the reach of Help bouncing on his hind legs. It spoke of magenta sunsets and plastic patio chairs growing moss under summer storms rolling on caterpillar tracks. It sprinkled a bokeh of car lights rushing through night highways and slapped our faces like the wind at a hundred and twenty miles an hour. It pictured Niamh playing guitar, washed up naked on a beach in Fiji. — Edgar Cantero

As a guitarist and a lot of the times as a singer, I don't feel that comfortable and you really feel that when there's not an electric guitar or a nice beat to back it up. But, I enjoy challenges as a rule. I have always felt that what doesn't kill you, will make you stronger. I have learned to love with the rawness a little bit more and I know what I need to work on a little bit more as the tour goes on. — Stephen Kellogg

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 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

My favorite electric guitar would have to be my Duesenberg. I've named her 'Dolores,' and she sings like an operatic menace. — Brendon Urie

One of the first things electric I ever saw was a guitar. I was living in a house with no electricity until, at 7, we moved to a house that had it. It had electric lights, but the previous owners had even taken the light bulbs with them when they moved. — George Benson

I don't have an image of myself, when I'm walking down the street, like I'm a rock star or something. 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. I really don't live like a rock star, economically or socially. I still live a pretty simple life beside the traveling aspect of it. — Patti Smith

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

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

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 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

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

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

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

Rock & roll is not so much a question of electric guitars as it is striped pants. — David Lee Roth

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

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

I knew absolutely nothing about recording. I had this four-track recorder, and I'd plug my electric guitar right into it, which sounded real bad. I moved any fader that made a drastic change in sound. I thought that was cool - that it was communicating something. I didn't have the skills to do anything subtle. It was just like screaming. — Bill Callahan

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

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

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 don't see any rock stars playing an electric guitar from some new maker like you see in the acoustic guitar world. — Paul Reed Smith

I clicked the gate shut and slipped down the alley. Through one fence after another, I caught glimpses of people in their dining rooms and living rooms, eating and watching TV dramas. Food smells drifted into the alley through kitchen windows and exhaust fans. One teenaged boy was practicing a fast passage on his electric guitar, with the volume turned down. In a second floor window, a tiny girl was studying at her desk, an earnest expression on her face. A married couple in a heated argument sent their voices out to the alley. A baby was screaming. A telephone rang. Reality spilled out into the alley like water from an overfilled bowl - as sound, as smell, as image, as plea, as response. — Haruki Murakami

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

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

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

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

My guitar heroes are Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck and people like that - so I've tried to make an album of Robert Johnson covers that, well, while not totally faithful for blues purists, is faithful for people like me that grew up with the '60s and the electric blues-rock versions of Johnson's songs. — Todd Rundgren

I'd play whenever I could get my hands on an electric guitar; I was trying to pick up rock'n'roll riffs and electric blues-the latest Muddy Waters. I'd spend hours and hours on the same track, back again, and back again. — Keith Richards

When I was a teenager, I really didn't like loud rock music. I listened to jazz and blues and folk music. I've always preferred acoustic music. And it was only, I suppose, by the time Jethro Tull was getting underway that we did let the music begin to have a harder edge, in particular with the electric guitar being alongside the flute. — Ian Anderson

My stepfather met my mother when I was seven years old, and he was a guitar player. So he caught me messing with his guitar, his electric guitar, and he tried to show me some chords, but my hands were too small. — George Benson

When I was about 12, I wanted a CD player for Christmas, but instead my parents gave me a really crappy electric guitar. — Sam Endicott

The electric guitar meant that you could have a band with a drummer and a couple of guitars. And that put a lot of horn players out of work. — Keith Richards

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

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

If I had an axe on the evening at Newport when [Dylan] broke out the electric guitar, I'd have cut his cable. — Pete Seeger

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

I played recorder in assembly, then I became passionate about the guitar, I don't know why. I started on electric then moved to acoustic - my brother was playing bass in the next room. — Ellie Goulding

To me, the coolest riffs are composed of two guitar parts that interlock like gears. You need both parts to make whole. I work things out on an electric that's not plugged in to make sure a good tone isn't forgiving a part that couldn't stand up naked. Only after the parts are written will I struggle to find a tone that supports the creativity. — Richard Lloyd

The electric guitar was vital in helping what I've achieved where would I be without it? Playing awfully quietly, for a start. — Keith Richards

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

I bought my first electric guitar when I moved to Memphis; a Gibson with a DeArmond pickup which I used with a small Gibson amplifier. — B.B. King

We actually added an extra electric guitar to beef up 'Need You Now', but we haven't changed any of this 'Own The Night' record at all for the international releases. — Dave Haywood

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

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

Without the Fender bass, there'd be no rock n' roll or no Motown. The electric guitar had been waiting 'round since 1939 for a nice partner to come along. It became an electric rhythm section, and that changed everything. — Quincy Jones

My parents got me a $25 Kent steel-string acoustic guitar when I was around 12. The following Christmas, my parents bought me a Conora electric guitar. It looked almost like a Gretsch. It cost $59, and my mom still has it. — Alex Lifeson