Quotes by Pat Metheny

• It's more about conception and touch and spirit and soul than whether my hardware was in place.
• I was able to work with the best musicians in Kansas City starting when I was really young.
• The first thing I learned was the theme from Peter Gunn.
• The beauty of jazz is that it's malleable. People are addressing it to suit their own personalities.
• People sometimes say it takes a long time to become a jazz fan, but for me it took about five seconds.
• My older brother Mike is an excellent trumpet player. By the time he was 12, he was playing around Kansas City in classical situations. He was already an amazing talent.
• Jazz is not something that can be defined through blunt instruments. It is much more poetic than that.
• I was deep in the zone of practicing almost constantly.
• I don't know if I would qualify as mainstream. I think I have managed to function pretty successfully on the fringes of the music world and have been able to play exactly what I have wanted the way I have wanted.
• Listening is the key to everything good in music.
• I think I represent a more left-wing view of what jazz is.
• From 1962 to 1965, the guitar became this icon of youth culture, thanks mostly to the Beatles.
• I don't worry too much about the fundamentalist principles that are in almost any discussion about jazz.
• I realized that equipment really had little to do with why I sound like the way I sound.
• I saw A Hard Day's Night 12 or 13 times.
• I think I have a basic sound aesthetic that is in most of what I do.