Quotes
The most effective instruments do have a vocal quality.
The last time I went in the studio, I spent a few days in the studio, and there wasn't a single thing I came out with that I could use. This can happen.
The jazz singers I used to listen to weren't the official singers but were very often musicians, like Dizzy Gillespie, who sang as well. There were certain people in jazz who sang in ways that no one would call proper singing but it still would work.
The appearance of variety is a complete illusion. It's like somebody who's got a dartboard in his room, and there's darts all over it, but all I was trying to do was hit the board. That's all I've ever tried to do.
The '60s are a washout to me. It gives me a queasy feeling in the pit of my stomach when I remember the whole era. It's like trying to ask somebody on the Titanic if they had a good time until it went down.
Pianists like Gil Evans and Duke Ellington-people who are playing but actually thinking about something else half the time-influenced me a lot.
People say, oh it's a shame, you're not nostalgic about the '60s. Well actually, it's quite good, when you think of it. Wouldn't it be sad if I was sitting here wishing it back?
People associate those songs by Otis Blackwell and Big Mama Thornton with Presley. They think of them as his songs, and quite rightly so, because they're no better than the originals, but they worked as Elvis Presley songs. So they're his songs, because of his voice.
People are quite shocked when you remind them that Elvis Presley and Frank Sinatra never wrote a song that they recorded in their lives, as far as I know.
On the whole, I tend not to listen to my peers.
My real feeling of lack of freedom comes from the fact that I have to be anything at all, specific.
My heroes are people like Picasso and Miro and people who at last really reach something in their old age, which they absolutely couldn't ever have done in their youth.
My harmonic and rhythmic ideas really don't come from rock at all. I do feel pleased that I'm just old enough to remember the great music of the '50s. I saw Duke Ellington, and Eric Dolphy playing with Coltrane and with Mingus. To me, that's completely unmatchable.
Maybe people really feel they had their moment. I don't think they're any the worse for that.
Love is blind. My politics has been, too. I think you can fall in love with ideas, and you can fall in love with people. It's a very subjective experience. And I'm loyal to that experience.
It's sort of hard to do originals when you can't even play properly.
It's not a snobbishness, this thing about commercial stuff. It's just the fact that it seems to have a momentum all its own, and there seems to be demands made on it. You know how it is with Hollywood films-they're really accountant-led.
It's been very good for me to have been asked on various things, but in the end it surprises me. I just try and do the things that people ask me to do. It's nice, in a way. I don't have the responsibility for the final thing.
It was physically difficult, adjusting to wheelchair life, but I remember a great relief and happiness that I was finally getting somewhere, finding musicians to work with that were sympathetic.
It just doesn't mean anything to me, the high-profile, big money side of things. I just want enough to live on, and to be able to get on with what I do, and hang around my friends.