Quotes by Andy Summers

• In The Police, in a trio situation - which I've come back to now - it's just so wide open that it does actually provide this arena where you can play with a certain freedom.
• I'm just trying to avoid any sort of generic kind of music - I don't want to do generic jazz or fusion.
• I've got four or five records in my head at a time that I try to work on and I would like to do a guitar trio record next - since The Police I've mostly made records with keyboards.
• If I'm playing a violin thing, for instance, I tend to respond to that sound with the way I finger.
• If the guitar synthesizer is really going to stand as a synthesizer on its own, it needs to develop a more characteristic sound; I don' think it's gotten there yet.
• I'm better for it and I prefer to keep things simple and see what sounds I can get out of my head and hands rather than relying on a sound that someone else created.
• I am pretty embroiled in moving on and moving forward with music.
• It accumulates over the years and I've led so many bands of my own now and forced myself into new situations... You would hope that you play better and better - until you just get too feeble to do it anymore.
• It is not very practical in today's world when you tour all over the place having a big band.
• If you're a guitarist, you should not be intimidated by using your instrument as a synthesizer, but you shouldn't feel that you have to own one, either.
• Actually, I think my hands are in the best shape they've ever been in terms of what I can do.
• I was totally into jazz in my teens.
• I think we are coming to a new era where people will record much faster.
• I think rock records tend to be very expensive.
• I spend a lot of time working as a painter and in my studio I go from upstairs where I paint to downstairs where I play and record, so I get this thing crossing over.
• I like to play with someone who can cover a lot of ground and someone with whom you can discuss the language at a reasonable level; otherwise it gets a bit frustrating.
• I don't have a great nostalgia for the past.
• I actually think I play better now than I've ever played.
• For me, the guitar synthesizer is a great writing instrument.
• I don't like playing standards. I like to do my own cutting edge work.
• I would like to play with electronic keyboards again.
• My favorite sounds are the high, spacey ones that are very ambient.
• There was a period when I'd just come out of college where I'd been playing classical guitar and I suddenly realised that it wasn't what I wanted to do with the rest of my life.
• Of course the playing is important but writing and the establishing of what you are going for is prime too.
• More recently, I used guitar synthesizer extensively on the two albums I did with Robert Fripp.
• It's hard to avoid the past but one goes forward.
• It's been very hard for the guitar as a serious synthesizer to compete with keyboards.
• The most obvious thing you can't do with a guitar synthesizer is to really sound like a guitar.
• What I wanted to do was play the guitar but I don't like instrumental rock. I think it is tripe.