Sax Quotes

The sax solo as we know it today would not exist without Gerry Rafferty. His 1978 soft-rock classic ‘Baker Street’ has to be the ‘Ulysses’ of rock & roll saxophone, giving the entire chorus over to Raphael Ravenscroft’s sax solo, creating one of the Seventies’ most enduringly creepy sounds.

As far as other instrumentalists, I used to love mellow sax players like Paul Desmond. I love piano.

Any saxophone player will have those influences come through in their music in a very different way. I can listen to the same 10 sax players as someone else for my entire life, and we’ll both play completely differently. That’s the beauty of being a musician.

I take my job as a rock and roll sax player very seriously. To do it the way that I must do it, I must be in good condition. The better shape you’re in, the harder you can rock.

I wanted my voice to be a tenor sax, really.

I got one of the best sax players in the business – Arno Hecht. He plays with the Uptown Horns and all the great blues bands. He expresses the heart of the Apollo Theatre, let me tell you.

I play saxophone, I play tenor sax.

What about that Dave Brubeck live album, with a version of ‘Like Someone in Love’ on it, and long sax solos by Paul Desmond? That’s what got me hooked on jazz.

As a horn player, the greatest compliment one can get is when a person comes to you and says, ‘I heard this saxophone on the radio the other day and I knew it was you. I don’t know the song, but I know it was you on sax.’

My father was a jazz tenor sax player. He played in a lot of big bands. So I had that sound around me all the time. The first record that really caught my ear was Clifford Brown’s ‘Brownie Eyes.’ I grew up listening to John Coltrane and Illinois Jacquet. This is where I come from… I love improvisational music.

I played the sax at school. I was in marching band.

The beauty of recording in L.A. is that most of the musicians that are on the record live here, so it was easy to get world class artists like Rick Braun to swing by and play a little trumpet, Everette Harp on sax, guitarist Paul Jackson.

One of the reasons I wanted a sax in the band was that I loved Fats Domino’s ‘Blueberry Hill.’

When you play a sax, that saxophone is irreverent. It’s noisy; it’s a trickster… you cannot hide the saxophone in your hands, so it’s a good teacher.

Baby Jane’ is a tune, what a sax solo. And The Faces’ ‘Stay With Me’ is amazing.

Now that I am much older, I have had a number of sax players tell me I was responsible for them playing sax. Some of them I have admired over the years.

I like what Oliver Lakes does on the saxophone. The saxophone comes pretty close to the sound of the human voice and when Oliver plays with other sax players, it’s like a dialogue.

He used to have a tent show, a little tent show, and I thought I was going to get a job working one year on the tent show, but he closed it down and I never got to go out there, but anyway, he had a sax and played drums.

I’m still waiting for someone to call me to cater their wedding. But that’s gonna cost you. If you want my cousin Jerez to play the sax, that’s going to cost you a little more. The sky’s the limit after that.

We’ve got an electric organ, a sax, drums, guitar and bass guitar. We sound less like the Beatles than most of the groups.

To me, the sax is rock n’ roll, even though electric guitars kind of pushed it aside for a while.

I’d love to be a saxophonist. I don’t know why, but I pretend I’m the saxophonist when I listen to music. I have about as much chance playing the sax as I do learning how to fly.

Playing the sax and then enjoying jazz music, man – it’s like I learned how to find words inside of the beat.

People like, George Soros, Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, Paul Krugman, Joe Stiglitz, Jeffrey Sax, Dean Baker, Robert Poland, Larry Summers have said they all support a transaction tax.

In the end, I didn’t think I was good enough to use sax as a stage performer to get where I wanted, and thank God I chose my voice as my instrument instead. You need to be honest with yourself, and I was.

I’ve just been recording mostly acoustic stuff, drums, and sax, and electric guitar. I’m just still writing songs and what not.

I put pressure on myself all the time. I felt it so much with ‘Sax,’ but I had to just let go and enjoy it.

I’ve never really played golf. With the sax, I learned technique well enough so that it feels like part of my body, and I just express myself. That’s where I want to get in golf.

I was focusing on sax while at Berklee, but then I started to play Brazilian choro and Colombian music. I was doing more folkloric stuff on the clarinet because it works better. Finally, I realized I was working more on the clarinet than the saxophone, and I started to feel more comfortable on it.

I’d rather somebody punch me in the face than drop my sax.