Music Quotes

I never met Johnny Rotten, and I didn't want to meet Johnny Rotten.

I did play a lot of fingerstyle when I first started playing. I could never really find the right combination of flatpick or fingerpick, so playing fingerstyle is really the easiest way - though it's quite strenuous on the fingertips.

It is painful to relive things that have caused emotional crises or whatever and find ways to express that musically.

When you're onstage with an electric band going through a massive P.A. system, it's very artificial. You can't really hear your own voice as it comes out of your mouth.

My dedication to my music has driven everyone away. I've had girlfriends, but I always end up on my own. I don't particularly like it, but I don't see a way 'round it.

We didn't really have a band with Cream. We rarely played as an ensemble; we were three virtuosos, all of us soloing all the time.

I thought that young bands like Oasis had learned from our mistakes. Instead, they are irresponsible and arrogant. They act like hooligans. They are a load of shit to me.

Music will always find its way to us, with or without business, politics, religion, or any other bullshit attached. Music survives everything, and like God, it is always present. It needs no help, and suffers no hindrance.

Musically I was fed up with the virtuoso thing. Our gigs had become nothing more than an excuse for us to show off as individuals, and any sense of unity we might have had when we started seemed to have gone out the window.

I had no idea how to do that, because I was either above or below everybody. I was either towering above as Clapton the guitar virtuoso, or cringing on the floor, because if you took away my guitar and my musical career, then I was nothing.

Let It Grow," and it was several years before I realized that I had totally ripped off "Stairway to Heaven," the famous Zeppelin anthem, a cruel justice seeing as how I'd always been such a severe critic of theirs.

During the pause while I was changing my string, the frenzied audience would often break into a slow handclap, inspiring Giorgio to dream up the nickname of "Slow hand" Clapton.

Every time you pick up your guitar to play, play as if it's the last time.

My driving philosophy about making music is that you can reduce it all down to one note if that note is played with the right kind of sincerity.

You can't mastermind everything. You'll go crazy. Just show up and play.

Whatever your standing in life, the most important thing is behaving in ways that help other people. It's the same with music. I am a servant of the music ... and if I get caught up in ego, I'll lose everything .. it'll burn and that's a guarantee.

When I saw Jimi Hendrix I knew immediately that this guy was the real thing ... and when he played it was like a rough sketch of what he was going to become ... this guy was our generation, and he wasn't in a suit .. he played a Howlin' Wolf song 'Killing Floor', and then we (The Cream) had to carry on the set. It was pretty hard to follow.

For me there is something primitively soothing about this music, and it went straight to my nervous system, making me feel ten feet tall.

I can't play long solos anymore without boring myself.

My definition of Blues is that it's a musical form which is very disciplined and structured coupled with a state of mind, and you can have either of those things but it's the two together that make it what it is. And you need to be a student for one, and a human being for the other, but those things alone don't do it.