Joe Bonamassa Quotes

My first memory of guitar was seeing my father play one.

I’m honored people think enough of my playing to chase my sound. Hell, I chase other players’ tones all the time.

There’s great cars, and then there’s Aston Martins. Same thing for the 1959 Les Paul – it’s an authentic piece of art that can never truly be replicated, and its mysteries are special.

There’s a certain thing when you start getting into your late thirties or early forties where you stop caring. Not to the extent where you stop caring about the music, you just stop caring about what anyone thinks of you, and you just kind of let it go – let the chips fall where they may.

I’ve always been a fan of the five-speed transmission – on anything.

Being a niche kind of artist, you’re not going to make a lot of friends in the traditional music biz.

I’ll tell you, what the world doesn’t need is another Joe Bonamassa DVD.

When you’ve done so many records in 20 years like I have, you’re going to have ebbs and flows and go through peaks and valleys.

Doing the acoustic at Carnegie is basically advised because electric music tends to get, let’s just say, acoustically unsound.

I’m a self-loathing slide player. Some people like the way I play slide – I hate it.

I collect as many acoustic guitars as I need for a specific purpose. Acoustic guitars are really just tools for me.

I’m actually much more of a rock player than many people think.

A guitar is a guitar. Whether it was made yesterday or 51 years ago, if it’s good, it will stand the test of time.

It’s not enough to play a song: you have to inhabit it.

My goal for ‘Black Rock’ was pretty simple: I wanted to make the feel-good record of the summer.

I think what I do really well is that I can ‘chameleon’ myself into many styles at a very fast pace, sometimes in the same verse of a song.

A great solo is one that’s so frail that it actually teeters on the edge of falling apart, but doesn’t.

When you think blues, you think BB King. Even a young kid can look at a picture of BB King and say, ‘the blues.’ The man is more than a musician. He’s a monument.

I’ve really gotten over pedals. I can’t keep up with this craze of boutique pedals that make you sound like everything but your guitar. I can’t get my head around it.

You know who I’d like to open for? This will be a surprise, but I’ll tell you who: Iron Maiden.

It’s good to see young kids getting into the blues.

I’m not a household name; I’m just a household name to guitar freaks.

I used to watch MTV when they played music, and discovered Robert Cray, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Jeff Healey.

I live, breathe, and sleep guitars.

I don’t really do scales… I mean, I play parts of them, but then I bail and start playing parts of other things. The term ‘scale’ feels very scripted to me because I’m an improv player.

If you have a good riff with a vocal as well, then it becomes a devastating song. That’s why people love riff-rock: it’s the ultimate air guitar music.

When you’re 12 and, you know, slightly overweight and – for lack of a better word – white, and you’re playing blues, you get a lot of press.

That’s the thing about the blues: It’s one thing to hit a note on a guitar. To make it matter is something else altogether.

I’ve never been universally loved from the beginning.

Nothing I’m doing musically is revolutionary in any way, shape, or form.

It doesn’t matter if people take the music for free, because you can’t illegally download a ticket to a concert.

I love to collect guitars made in the 1950s. I like preserving and playing them.

I really loved being able to perform my songs and sing them myself.

British blues was my favorite music, and it still is.

I went through a period in my life where I didn’t have money to buy ramen noodles and peanut butter and jelly, but I also needed to go to the guitar store and buy strings and picks and polish and rags. I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t play guitar.

I learned that if I put my mind to something vocally, I can pull it off. You just have to get your head-space right.

I’ve always been a big fan of taking old songs and completely turning them on their head. Having no adherence to the fine tradition of the original version. Rearranging them and taking a different approach to them.

The one area where I’ll say that Hendrix is underrated was his ability to use chord melodies. He used different inversions of chords and was able to make a three-piece band sound absolutely huge. From the moment Hendrix and the Experience came on the scene, power trios had their work cut out for them.

I play acoustic when I need to play acoustic, and I say I’m probably a better acoustic player than I am electric.

If I feel like things are getting into a routine, I want them to be different. I need to keep improving and keep moving forward.

Whenever I hear my playing, I can’t detach from my influences: there’s my Jeff Beck, there’s the Clapton bit, the Eric Johnson bit, the Birelli Lagrene bit, the Billy Gibbons.

When you go into a situation, and you’re honest and straight-up about something, you put all your cards on the table.

When I write for an album, I’ll always have about 30 different types of instrument around me. I set them up in a small room with my computer running GarageBand, which is always set to record.

All I’m trying to do is simply play guitar and elicit this creativity from the instrument.

The blues, the way it’s interpreted, is always a product of your environment, and so it’s almost like food. You know, it’s like you use the ingredients, and you use your life experiences that you have.

At the end of the day, you, as the player, create the tone coming out of the amp. The gear is part of it but by no means all of it.

If you keep working hard and not take ‘no’ for an answer, you achieve.

There are good ’59 Les Pauls, and there are not-so-good ones. There are ones that are just OK, that don’t sustain as well.

I am the poster boy for brick-by-brick foundation building. Play a club. Put on a good show for 35 people. Come back. Build your market. Have people talk about you.

At the end of the day, I think having some life experience is helpful to play any kind of music.

I’m an acoustic guitar owner – in the sense that I own them, and they sit at my house, and I never play them.

Everything Paul Kossoff did came from his fingers and went right into the amp. He was his own effects unit.

A guitar is so tactile, and when you’re playing bends – and bending notes is a big part of my style – there are so many notes within the note you’re bending from and the note you’re bending up to.

‘Beck-Ola’ is a weird album.

I’m a kooky collector and own a couple of hundred guitars.

I never had this ego where I must write everything. I’m not Bob Dylan.

There’s always talk about the blues dying out, but it won’t.

Basically, 2011 was the hardest year on the road for me because I did a spring tour and a fall tour plus nine weeks in the summer, and I was pretty worse for wear by the time I got home in December. I know I was only 34, but that was a tough lap.

One of these days, when I get tired of it all, I’ll keep six guitars and the amps I’m using, and I’ll have a big old auction for charity.

That’s where the Black Keys and Jack White have succeeded and I’ve failed: They’ve actually convinced college kids that they’re listening to hip music – but it’s just blues twisted a new way – while I’m playing for the college kid’s parents.

It’s nice just to be able to go out and, basically, be able to play other types of music and not have any pressure to almost explain it and justify why you did. I just do it because I like to have some fun.

I’ve been lucky and very fortunate over the course of my career, and I try to do something good for people every day.

Jimi Hendrix is a classic example of a player in which everything he did, it was all in his hands.

Greece was a muse. It inspired creativity in magical ways that I can’t even begin to understand or explain.

I’m always looking for something new to do.

I work well under pressure.

Greece is so beautiful and inspiring.

Most blues guitar players don’t concentrate on singing and melodies. And forget about the bridge – the bridge doesn’t exist. They go straight for the solo.

As far as actual playing, Clapton – by far – is my biggest influence, and you can tuck Jeff Beck underneath that.

Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck made me an Anglophile. I listened to English and Irish artists as a kid, and they were way louder, heavier, and faster than the traditional blues that I was listening to.