Quotes & Sayings About Guitars

I do have electric guitars, because I've always believed, especially when I'm working in the studio with other bands as producer, that there should be a really nice Strat around. — Nick Mason

Hillingham first saw the women by the dwile flonkers. He had spent the day walking around Dover's Hill, the shallow amphitheatre where the Cotswold Olimpick Games took place and had taken, he thought, some good photographs so far. The place was heaving and he had captured some of that, he hoped; the shifting bustle as people flocked from event to event and laughed and shouted and ate and drank. The sound of cymbals and mandolins and violins and guitars filled the air about the crowd, leaping around the brightly costumed figures and the smells of roasting meat and open fires.
("The Cotswold Olimpicks") — Reggie Oliver

I have a lot of guitars. Yeah, I'm not like a guitar collector, I don't have all vintage instruments. I don't even own a Strat or Les Paul. I don't have one. — John Petrucci

We're just musically and rhythmically retarded. We play so hard that we can't tune our guitars fast enough. People can relate to that. — Kurt Cobain

The real lost souls don't wear their hair long and play guitars. They have crew cuts and trained minds, sign on for research in biological warfare, and don't give their parents a moment's worry. — J.B. Priestley

I mean, i was into their music and everything way before I knew what they looked like, but they had their pictures in the CD insert and when Victoria and I got it, we were both like, "Why, hellooooo there." Plus, they were British. I'm a sucker for cute boys with guitars, as you may have noticed, but throw in a London accent and I'll happily sell my soul without a second thought. — Robin Benway

Rock stars should be able to tune their own guitars, apply their own eyeliner, and pick out their own leather pants. — Shawn Amos

Somebody's going to wake up and their job in life is going to be to make guitars. There are a lot of good, talented people. — Paul Reed Smith

I like guitar. It just turned out that it's the instrument I learned to play. I have a lot of respect for it, and I'm learning more and more every day. For me, the classic band setup - guitars, drums, bass - will stay fresh forever. I don't know. I'm still into it. — Mac DeMarco

A man can never have too many pairs of sunglasses or too many guitars. — Richie Sambora

I see what I want of Love ... I see horses making the meadow dance, fifty guitars sighing, and a swarm of bees suckling the wild berries, and I close my eyes until I see our shadow behind this dispossessed place ...
I see what I want of people: their desire to long for anything, their lateness in getting to work and their hurry to return to their folk ... and their need to say: Good Morning ... — Mahmoud Darwish

I think Blank Generation holds up pretty well. You listen to that with headphones and there's a lot going on there with the guitars- it's the product of a lot of fighting. — Robert Quine

This band - because this is myself on electric and acoustic guitars - we've done three tours together now and I really, really like it which is why I did the DVD as well. — Joan Armatrading

Gary Burnetts office is shelved with theological books, guitars fill the floor, and the drawers are crammed with CDs. In The Gospel According to the Blues, Gary brings his vocation as a New Testament teacher together with his passion for the blues and gives the reader scholarly knowledge and wise insight. — Steve Stockman

Guitars have been the obsession of my life. I first picked one up at the age of four and I've been a guitar junkie ever since. — Johnny Marr

I like my guitars to be kinda worn. I don't like it when they're all shiny. — Vivian Campbell

The Bangles are proof that short skirts and electric guitars go hand-in-hand. They are one of the great all-girl groups, backing up their looks with a serious pop-rock pedigree. — Shawn Amos

A Strat was a thing of wonder .. when I was 14 or 15, the Shadows were a big influence, and they had the first Strats that came to England. I like to play all kinds of guitars, but I wasn't getting the sound I really wanted until I got a Stratocaster — Mark Knopfler

It was 2002, we all got guitars for Christmas and started playing in my garage that summer, rehearsed there and in a warehouse for a bit for about a year. We did our first gig in June 2003 and we played a few gigs in and around Sheffield for a bit then started doing gigs outside of Sheffield about this time last year, recording demos while all this was going on. — Alex Turner

I play bass. I play a bit of guitar. I've never been to a lesson, so my theory of music is non-existent in any instrument, but we always had guitars around. My dad taught me to play drums for 'Love Actually,' and I still play drums now. But I'm not a 'drummer.' I'm not a 'guitarist.' I'm trying to be a bassist. — Thomas Sangster

I'll give it a year. I'll go out and play these clubs and then I'll go on to college.' But after a year, I was so far in debt from trying to buy amps and guitars and everything else, that I had to do another year. — Alan Paul

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

The street's alive as secret debts are paid, Contacts made, they vanished unseen. Kids flash guitars just like switch-blades Hustling for the record machine. The hungry and the hunted explode into rock'n'roll bands That face off against each other out in the street, down in Jungleland. — Bruce Springsteen

I've had only three wives and three guitars in my life, though I've flirted with others. — Andres Segovia

There are as many burning guitars, as there are burning doves. — Weasel

First guitars tend to be like first loves: ill-chosen, unsuitable, short-lived and unforgettable. — Tim Brookes

When you go to awards shows these days, you can walk through a room and they give you everything for free: sunglasses, guitars, stuff for the wife. — Jordan Knight

Suffice to say that the TG2, Germ pre and EQ, and TG1 are there anytime I track drums, TG2 for guitars and the LTD-1 is there whenever I do vocals! — Billy Bush

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

Yeah, on the records, the guitars are made melodic, and I try to make it memorable. There's not much just wanking, to be honest - it's mostly melodic parts. I try not to play too many notes. It's just more instrumental music. It's a totally valid criticism if you don't like that kind of thing. It also is maybe a little anachronistic or unnecessary in a certain way. — Stephen Malkmus

We weren't listening to guitar bands, we were thoroughly ashamed of being a guitar band. So we bought loads of keyboards and learned how to use them, and when we got bored we went back to guitars. — Thom Yorke

You can't beat two guitars, bass, and drums. — Lou Reed

Martin guitars have now brought out, you know, on a more traditional level, the Stephen Stills' model of Martin guitars. It's beautiful. I just went inside. I bought one immediately. — Graham Nash

Symmetria by the Uccello Project is a gorgeous, instrumental and largely unclassifiable record. Best thought of as 'cinematic', each of the tracks conjures up a range of emotions and images, taking the listener on a beautiful journey. The layers of basses, guitars and percussion ebb and flow, drawing on jazz, folk, blues and African music, blending all the elements into one lovely album. Recommended. — Steve Lawson

I've always considered myself a folk singer, even though we strapped on Rickenbacker guitars and played pretty loud. — Roger McGuinn

She sank with an enormous sigh that carried all rigidity like a mythical fluid from her, down next to him; so weak she couldn't help him undress her; it took him 20 minutes, rolling, arranging her this way and that, as if she thought, he were some scaled-up, short-haired, poker-faced little girl with a Barbie doll. She may have fallen asleep once or twice. She awoke at last to find herself getting laid; she'd come in on a sexual crescendo in progress, like a cut to a scene where the camera's already moving. Outside a fugue of guitars had begun, and she counted each electronic voice as it came in, till she reached six or so and recalled only three of the Paranoids played guitars; so others must be plugging in. — Thomas Pynchon

Some make their worlds without knowing it. Their universes are just sesame seeds and three-day weekends and dial tones and skinned knees and physics and driftwood and emerald earrings and books dropped in bathtubs and holes in guitars and plastic and empathy and hardwood and heavy water and high black stockings and the history of the Vikings and brass and obsolescence and burnt hair and collapsed souffles and the impossibility of not falling in love in an art museum with the person standing next to you looking at the same painting and all the other things that just happen and are. — Jonathan Safran Foer

Speaking in a common tongue, speaking through guitars and drums. — Lou Reed

There was scant precedent for the prickly kind of pop the Pixies played, and their sound is recognizable on the slightest whiff. It's a series of opposing forces that fit together incongruously but exquisitely: a bouncy yet firm bassline (Deal called it "boingy-boingysproingy") joined to a demented choir of punky guitars; Thompson's harsh primal scream beside Deal's coy and smoky harmonies; explosive, grating riffs in songs crafted from prime bubblegum. Behind it all is Thompson's song-writing, playful but also insular, inscrutable. — Ben Sisario

The angels had guitars before they had wings. — Meat Loaf

The media says that equality for women has arrived, but if you look around, you still don't see girls playing guitars and having success with it. — Joan Jett

Some sample lyrics I think I catch: "My engine races up to seventh gear; wrap your legs around my engine, dear ... The tunnel's dark, but the ground is wet; I lubricate it with my dripping sweat!"
Or, something vaguely disturbing and gross like that; it's hard to tell with the wailing guitars and the front man screaming through his ravaged vocal chords. — Rusty Fischer

I've been into Sonic Youth since junior high school. I think I kind of have ADD, so it's good music for ADD because it just throws you in different directions all the time. I really like Kim Gordon's voice and Thurston Moore's voice, and I like the guitars going off on tangents. — Norman Reedus

For the longest time, I didn't even want to admit I was serious about music. Before the Shins, I would tell myself, 'Oh, I'm going to figure something out someday.' I had this romantic vision of being this old dude maybe making guitars or something. — James Mercer

I can't take any more white boys noodling around on their guitars. — Gene Ween

'Each man kills the things he loves'. I recognise that in myself, in relationships, even with guitars, beautiful things that I've had and wilfully destroyed. — Pete Doherty

I don't really collect guitars like some musicians do. — Tom Curren

There's a very old recording maxim that goes, 'Distance makes depth.' I've used that a hell of a lot-whether it's tracking guitars or the whole band. People are used to close-miking amps, but I'd have a mic out around the back, as well, and then balance the two. Also, you shouldn't have to use EQ in the studio if the instruments sound right. You should be able to get the right tones simply with the science of microphone placement. — Jimmy Page

I'm left-handed, and it's not very easy to find reasonably priced, high-quality left-handed guitars. But out of all the guitars in the whole world, the Fender Mustang is my favorite. I've only owned two of them. — Kurt Cobain

When the cities are gone and all the ruckus has died away. when sunflowers push up through the concrete and asphalt of the forgotten interstate freeways. when the Kremlin & the Pentagon are turned into nursing homes for generals, presidents, & other such shit heads. when the glass-aluminum sky scraper tombs of Phoenix, AZ barely show above the sand dunes. why then, by God, maybe free men & wild women on horses can roam the sagebrush canyonlands in freedom ... and dance all night to the music of fiddles! banjos! steel guitars! by the light of a reborn moon! — Edward Abbey

Like, when we did Parliament and Funkadelic and Bootsy, it was actually one thing. But there were so many people that you could split them up into different groups. And then, when we went out on tour and they [the record companies] would see us all up there together - we had five, six guitars playing at one time, not including the bass! -, they said: "Wait a minute, that's just one whole group, selling different names!" But it wasn't - we had enough people in the group that each member would have a section to be another group. So now we're finally starting to get them to understand that. — Gary Snyder

I often think about my Music Man guitars being 100 million percent tailored to my needs as a player and how lucky I am. — John Petrucci

Toward the end of his second decade in the airport, Clark was thinking about how lucky he'd been. Not just the mere fact of survival, which was of course remarkable in and of itself, but to have seen one world end and another begin. And not just to have seen the remembered splendors of the former world, the space shuttles and the electrical grid and the amplified guitars, the computers that could be held in the palm of a hand and the high-speed trains between cities, but to have lived among those wonders for so long. To have dwelt in that spectacular world for fifty-one years of his life. Sometimes he lay awake in Concourse B of the Severn City Airport and thought, "I was there," and the thought pierced him through with an admixture of sadness and exhilaration. — Emily St. John Mandel

Set your guitars and banjos on fire and before you write a song smoke a pack of whiskey and it'll all take care of itself. — Beck

In New York, I'm around a lot of the reasons I started playing music in the first place. I live right behind Matt Umanov Guitars. I live on the street that Suze Rotolo and Bob Dylan were walking down on the album cover. I recognize the history. — Steve Earle

Folk music is where I come from originally. The very first thing that introduced me to playing guitars at all was skiffle - my cousin had been in London the summer that skiffle was big. — Bjorn Ulvaeus

I like the clubs because ... we have two or three acoustic guitars up there and we're not hard-core slamming or stomping through the music. We're singing it with intricate harmonies and really showing the craftsmanship. — Toby Keith

I've got an Avalon guitar - that's the company that used to be Lowden. They come out of Ireland, and they're like these folk kind of guitars. You can pick 'em, you can strum 'em - they're quite good. — James Vincent McMorrow

When I write in the studio, I tend to gravitate toward the ability to play really loud, aggressive, post-punk stuff, with big, heavy guitars and a big rock drum sound. — Tom DeLonge

I don't leave my room, and all I am surrounded by are guitars and equipment, y'know? It's not always the best place to be. — Bradford Cox

One thing I loved about New Zealand was the indoor/outdoor lifestyle of the place. I remember going from Xboxing, jamming out on guitars and drum machines in my buddy's apartment, to a bike ride through the parks and up and down the streets all over the city, to the ocean, right into the water. I remember we were swimming outer ways and we got to a certain place where we wanted to see - or I wanted to see - how deep the water was. — Gabriel Mann

I've always been into guitars ... we want to put keyboards on, but keyboard players don't look cool onstage, they just keep their heads down. There has never been a cool keyboard player, apart from Elton John. — Noel Gallagher

Most of the members of the convent were old-fashioned Satanists, like their parents and grandparents before them. They'd been brought up to it, and weren't, when you got right down to it, particularly evil. Human beings mostly aren't. They just get carried away by new ideas, like dressing up in jackboots and shooting people, or dressing up in white sheets and lynching people, or dressing up in tie-dye jeans and playing guitars at people. Offer people a new creed with a costume and their hearts and minds will follow. Anyway, being brought up as a Satanist tended to take the edge off it. It was something you did on Saturday nights.
And the rest of the time you simply got on with life as best you could, just like everyone else. — Terry Pratchett

I don't really care what music's made on - I love guitars, but I'm fine with great electronic music. — Johnny Marr

I started playing guitar back in '56. I was a teenager, and guitars had just come in, and I had a thing for it and got one. Started learning lead breaks from songs, because that was the easiest thing to do at the time. I had the guitar for two years before I learned any chords. Really. — Roger McGuinn

Marconi said, "I see you have your instruments. Can any of you sing? The old spirituals work best."
John said, "I can sing."
I said, "No, you can't, John."
"Well, I play the guitar."
"So can I," said Big Jim. "We have two guitars."
I said, "This could not be any stupider."
John said, "Dave, you remember the words to 'Camel Holocaust'?"
"Ah, once again, you prove me wrong, John. — David Wong

It's interesting to see how acoustic guitars are emerging as a primary instrument once again ... reminds me very much of what Jim Messina and I were doing back then. You can't get too far away from an acoustic guitar — Kenny Loggins

His father had smashed his very first guitar for him, in an early attempt to rid Jude of his musical ambitions. Jude hadn't been able to repeat the act himself, not even onstage, for show, when he could afford all the guitars he wanted. He was, however, perfectly willing to use one as a weapon to defend himself. In a sense he supposed he had always used them as weapons. — Joe Hill

Rhythms, beats, etc., are fundamentally central to my creative drive: my first instrument was the drums, nearly every band I have been involved in or at the helm of, is driven by rhythm, my band is driven entirely by rhythm, machine rhythm, and the purpose of the rock instrumentation is literally to speak the beats, to emulate the rhythms with guitars and bass, with very little articulation, and without being 'progressive'. — Justin Broadrick

He looks like the kind of boy who would jump trains, strum guitars, and pass a joint. — Heather Demetrios

Bicycles are almost as good as guitars for meeting girls. — Bob Weir

Although I have guitars all around and I pick themm up occasionally and write a tune and make a record, I don't really see myself as a musician. It may seem a funny thing to say. It's just like, I write lyrics amd I make up songs, but I'm not a great lyricist or songwriter or producer. It's when you put all these things together - that makes me. — George Harrison

You can muck around with different guitars for certain bits, but you have to have your own sound. That's your benchmark, that's your sound. I also play a Black Beauty. It sounds amazing. — Dan Hawkins

You watch the country-music awards that they show on the television, and you see country music has reached about 1985. It's all huge processed drum sounds and chiming chorus guitars and programmed synths bobbling along in the background. — Andy Partridge

I know I love sexy surf guitars, I know I love loud snare. I love really simple repeating bass lines, and I love weird mad scientist keyboard sounds. — Kathleen Hanna

I used to cut guitars out of a piece of cardboard to copy the Strat look. I used a backwards tennis racket for a while and graduated to the cardboard cutout. — Rick Springfield

My interests are guitars, cars, and vacation. I've been playing guitar all my life. My dad was a professional guitarist, but I'm terrible, which lets me off the hook, so I just play for myself. — Josh Hartnett

I always lived with guitarists. When they would leave, I would just pick up their acoustic guitars and start doing finger picking and write. — Lou Doillon

I still believe in the need for guitars and drums and desperate poetry. — Frank Turner

I've been collecting some more high-end guitars. I have an old Martin D28 from the '60s, a beautiful, classic Martin that I know I played on 'Mariachi.' — Ani DiFranco

I guess you go too far when pianos try to be guitars. — Tori Amos

When I see 16 year-olds waiting for me, I just want to spank them and give them guitars and tell them to start bands. It's a bummer that girls have to respond to rock artists sexually instead of, like, 'wow, me too!'. — Courtney Love

The only two things in life that make it worth livin' / Is guitars that tune good and firm feelin' women — Waylon Jennings

The music defied classification. If I had been writing a
review of the show, I would have labeled it progressive,
guitar-driven rock 'n' roll. But the guitars made sounds guitars
didn't always make. Symphonic sounds. Sacred sounds.
The music dug in so deep you didn't hear it so much as feel
it, reminding me of a dream I used to have when I was a kid,
where I would be standing on a street corner, I would jump
into the air, flap my arms, and soar up into the sky.
That's the only way I could describe the music.
It was the sonic equivalent of flight. — Tiffanie DeBartolo

Tone on jazz guitars is a real tough issue. — Mark White

I wanted to smell the guitars. It's hard to explain but they have a smell. And the best way I could ever describe it would be to say they smell like potential. Ambition and desire. If such things had a smell. — Barbara Hall

A guitar can be so human, so sorrowful, so angry, and I wanted to figure out how to achieve that vibe without having to actually use guitars, because 'Badlands' is a very futuristic record - and making it that in an era of futuristic music is a really hard thing to do! — Halsey

My son, Wolfgang, plays drums, guitars and bass. — Eddie Van Halen

I used a fifties Les Paul custom on most of the stuff. I also used a Strat, a newer Strat. I had a million guitars in there but I used the Strat & the Les Paul in just about everything. There were a lot of different amp choices, I was working with a pro tools plug-in which is like an amplifier stimulator. The possibilities with something like that are just endless. — Tracii Guns

I have a couple of nice guitars that I use, but I don't have anything that I collect. I collect a lot of dust in my apartment, if that counts for anything. — Chris Carmack

My philosophy is, honestly, never collected anything that I don't play. I know a lot of people that collect guitars, but for me, I want instruments that I play. And if I don't play them, I don't' want to have them sitting in a closet collecting dust. — Ronnie Montrose

My guitars, Cadillacs, and hillbilly music Is the only thing that keeps me hanging on. — Dwight Yoakam

My wife bought me a vintage Gibson guitar that isn't just beautiful but has tremendous sentimental value. I have plenty of guitars for live gigs but this is one to treasure. — Bill Bailey

I don't listen to music made by white people. I especially hate anything where a guitar is used. I don't listen to white people and guitars. — Harmony Korine

I like The Smiths as well. They took a cue from The Buzzcocks. They have jangly guitars instead of distorted guitars. All the Manchester bands have a character about them. The Stone Roses and The Smiths and all that. Even if you don't like them, they have a certain original sound. — Steve Diggle

I'm a real sucker for guitars. I've had a crush on many, many a guitarist. — J.K. Rowling

Call it "the New Year's resolution effect" - it's why gyms that were crowded in January are only half full in July and why so many slightly used guitars are available on Craigslist. So — Anders Ericsson

I wish they'd had electric guitars in cotton fields back in the good old days. A whole lot of things would've been straightened out. — Jimi Hendrix

Raucous heavy metal of punk guitars screeching like robots put to the rack ... — Elizabeth George

If we were a rock 'n' roll band,
We'd travel all over the land.
We'd play and we'd sing and wear spangly things,
If we were a rock 'n' roll band.
If we were a rock 'n' roll band,
And we were up there on the stand,
The people would hear us and love us and cheer us,
Hurray for that rock 'n' roll band.
If we were a rock 'n' roll band
Then we'd have a million fans.
We'd goggle and laugh and sign autographs,
If we were a rock 'n' roll band.
If we were a rock 'n' roll band,
The people would all kiss our hands.
We'd be millionaires and have extra long hair,
If we were a rock 'n' roll band.
But we ain't no rock 'n' roll band,
We're just seven kids in the sand
With homemade guitars and pails and jars
And drums of potato chip cans.
Just seven kids in the sand,
Talkin' and wavin' our hands,
And dreamin' and thinkin' oh wouldn't it be grand,
If we were a rock 'n' roll band. — Shel Silverstein