Quotes About Blues

Rip Rig + Panic that I joined, they were really influenced by jazz and blues and punk. So I think what happened from punk, which was kind of DIY, was that it created a kind of creative place that was kind of without limits, in a way.

I guess I would call my music 'blues punk.' There's a lot of influences.

The Righteous Brothers were purely rhythm and blues, black music.

The Blues scene now is international. In the '50s it was purely something that you would hear in black clubs, played by black musicians, especially in America. But from the '60s onwards it changed.

As a guitar player, you can gravitate to the blues because you can play it easily. It's not a style that's difficult to pick up. It's purely emotive and dead easy to get a start with.

I still think the best metal bands have a blues feel. The first Black Sabbath album is kind of a bludgeoning of blues. Deep Purple also started out as a blues band.

It's always difficult to define what jazz is or what jazz isn't. To me, the only definition that I can think of is it's music where a lot of different elements are played at the same time. The harmonic, the melodic... You're pushing the boundaries on every level. That could be true of rhythm and blues as well. I'm a musician.

The old Fleetwood Mac was much better; they did some beautiful and, to my mind, very authentic blues. Chicken Shack did pretty well in Europe, but after I left, it was over.

I like the wildness of Buddy Guy.

I've been influenced by so many great people , like Sam Moore, Wilson Pickett, Otis Redding, John Lee Hooker, B.B. King, so many great blues and soul artists that I completely revere. So it's strange for me, actually, to hear somebody say, 'Oh, I was deeply influenced by your music.'

All of my solos are blues based. Even though a lot of my songs get into pop, I wind up going back to the blues. Trying to escape it is like trying to run from the devil.

The early influences, in many ways, were in Baltimore. I was passing open windows where there might be a radio playing something funky. In the summertime, sometimes there'd be a man sitting on a step, playing an acoustic guitar, playing some kind of folk blues. The seed had been planted.

The blues is something separate from what I do. They connect at certain spots, but blues is different. I wouldn't put it in with what my career has been. That would be a whole separate wing.

You know Bakersfield was full of workers from the south, from Texas and Arkansas, and they brought their gospel and blues with them. And that's the sound I grew with.

Well, I don't know how they define that. But they have this Texas blues thing blown kinda out of proportion. I am a Long John Hunter blues, before and after, that's what I am.

I was lucky enough to get to see guys like Bugs Henderson, Jimmy Wallace, all those great Texas blues players.

I'm not a super blues player, but I was exposed to the Texas blues sound while I was growing up, and that definitely rubbed off on me.

The blues scale was the first thing I learned. It's just a pentatonic scale with a flat seventh and a few notes that sound cool when you bend them. And because people have amalgamated the blues into this rock-blues scale, if you're using it, you better sound like a real authentic blues player.

The first thing I heard was spiritual music, which was imbedded. The second thing I heard was swing. And shortly, along with that, I began to hear the blues. And then I began to hear Latin music. Each one left its mark.

The one thing I loved about blues and soul was the way they taught the world how to express such deep feelings.

When The Who first started, we were playing blues, and I dug the blues and I knew what I was supposed to be playing, but I couldn't play it. I couldn't get it out. I knew what I had to play; it was in my head. I could hear the notes in my head, but I couldn't get them out on the guitar.

There's a lot of unreleased blues stuff I did with the Apollo Theater musicians, and there was of experimenting going on for me in the mid-'60s in that studio, which I think frustrated Columbia.

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'm a rock singer, but I love soul, I love blues, and I love theatrical stuff, too, like theatrical rock like Queen and Meat Loaf.