Top 70 Joe Bonamassa Quotes

The blues, the way it’s interpreted, is always a product of your environment, and so it’s almost like food. You know, it’s like you use the ingredients, and you use your life experiences that you have.

John Mayall doesn’t get enough credit. He’s not in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, which is a tragedy.

I’m actually much more of a rock player than many people think.

I really loved being able to perform my songs and sing them myself.

Most blues guitar players don’t concentrate on singing and melodies. And forget about the bridge – the bridge doesn’t exist. They go straight for the solo.

It doesn’t matter if people take the music for free, because you can’t illegally download a ticket to a concert.

I’m probably a more intentional acoustic player than I am an electric player because of lack of influences. I just play acoustic to see what happens.

I used to watch MTV when they played music, and discovered Robert Cray, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Jeff Healey.

When you go into a situation, and you’re honest and straight-up about something, you put all your cards on the table.

When I write for an album, I’ll always have about 30 different types of instrument around me. I set them up in a small room with my computer running GarageBand, which is always set to record.

A guitar is so tactile, and when you’re playing bends – and bending notes is a big part of my style – there are so many notes within the note you’re bending from and the note you’re bending up to.

I have a 1969 Grammer Johnny Cash acoustic guitar, and it’s so inspirational.

I am the poster boy for brick-by-brick foundation building. Play a club. Put on a good show for 35 people. Come back. Build your market. Have people talk about you.

If it wasn’t for guys like Gary Moore, I wouldn’t exist. He not only proved that the blues could rock but it could draw a crowd as well. All of which made a huge impression on me.

A great solo is one that’s so frail that it actually teeters on the edge of falling apart, but doesn’t.

‘Beck-Ola’ is a weird album.

The one area where I’ll say that Hendrix is underrated was his ability to use chord melodies. He used different inversions of chords and was able to make a three-piece band sound absolutely huge. From the moment Hendrix and the Experience came on the scene, power trios had their work cut out for them.

When you think blues, you think BB King. Even a young kid can look at a picture of BB King and say, ‘the blues.’ The man is more than a musician. He’s a monument.

There’s a certain thing when you start getting into your late thirties or early forties where you stop caring. Not to the extent where you stop caring about the music, you just stop caring about what anyone thinks of you, and you just kind of let it go – let the chips fall where they may.

Some people don’t like me at all. But… whatever. It comes with the territory.

I play acoustic when I need to play acoustic, and I say I’m probably a better acoustic player than I am electric.

I’ve never been known as a riff kind of artist.

My first proper ‘Here’s your guitar, Joseph’ was a 1981 Chiquita, one of those Erlewine travel guitars. And it was good for a four-year-old because it was small.

Greece is so beautiful and inspiring.

I don’t have any legato skills; I could never figure out how to roll the notes off.

Everything Paul Kossoff did came from his fingers and went right into the amp. He was his own effects unit.

There are good ’59 Les Pauls, and there are not-so-good ones. There are ones that are just OK, that don’t sustain as well.

If I feel like things are getting into a routine, I want them to be different. I need to keep improving and keep moving forward.

You know who I’d like to open for? This will be a surprise, but I’ll tell you who: Iron Maiden.

I work well under pressure.

When you’ve done so many records in 20 years like I have, you’re going to have ebbs and flows and go through peaks and valleys.

If I’m soloing, I usually try to start with a theme, which will often stem from the blues.

If you have a good riff with a vocal as well, then it becomes a devastating song. That’s why people love riff-rock: it’s the ultimate air guitar music.

It’s nice just to be able to go out and, basically, be able to play other types of music and not have any pressure to almost explain it and justify why you did. I just do it because I like to have some fun.

If we got into a time machine and went back to the 1700s, classical and baroque music would have been the equivalent of Beyonce and Jay-Z.

I feel like I always learn from somebody who can do something better than I can.

Carnegie was a life-long dream because I was a born New Yorker. I was born in upstate New York, and we’ve played Radio City, and we’ve played The Beacon, but Carnegie was this mystical place, you know?

There’s great cars, and then there’s Aston Martins. Same thing for the 1959 Les Paul – it’s an authentic piece of art that can never truly be replicated, and its mysteries are special.

Jimi Hendrix is a classic example of a player in which everything he did, it was all in his hands.

To sell out London’s Hammersmith Apollo is amazing. Selling it out for two nights? Even better.

I live, breathe, and sleep guitars.

Doing the acoustic at Carnegie is basically advised because electric music tends to get, let’s just say, acoustically unsound.

British blues was my favorite music, and it still is.

That’s where the Black Keys and Jack White have succeeded and I’ve failed: They’ve actually convinced college kids that they’re listening to hip music – but it’s just blues twisted a new way – while I’m playing for the college kid’s parents.

There’s always talk about the blues dying out, but it won’t.

As far as actual playing, Clapton – by far – is my biggest influence, and you can tuck Jeff Beck underneath that.

It’s good to see young kids getting into the blues.

The first thing you realise very quickly when you decide to do an acoustic version of an electric song is your solo either becomes either very truncated, very different, or non-existent, because even if you play a clean solo, it’s different with the Kryptonite… with the acoustic.

I learned that if I put my mind to something vocally, I can pull it off. You just have to get your head-space right.

I’ve never been universally loved from the beginning.

The fact that I tour religiously in the spring, religiously in the fall, and do 125 shows – you can set your watch to that. And you could have set your watch to that in 2000 or 1999, and you can set your watch to it in 2012.

When you play a gig in Poland or Australia, or you play a gig in Toledo, they all clap at the same parts of the show. They’re clapping for the solos in the exact same way.

I think what I do really well is that I can ‘chameleon’ myself into many styles at a very fast pace, sometimes in the same verse of a song.

At the end of the day, you, as the player, create the tone coming out of the amp. The gear is part of it but by no means all of it.

I dislike all those cookie-cutter Nashville songs. You know the ones: about tight jeans and pick-up trucks.

When you’re 12 and, you know, slightly overweight and – for lack of a better word – white, and you’re playing blues, you get a lot of press.

Sometimes you have to blame yourself before you can blame others.

I think great music sells records, and I also think, do you want to be a reality star, or someone that actually has credibility? Because you can’t have both.

There was a rumour that I was buying Gibson. It circulated around the Internet… And I just go, ‘How well off do you think I am?’ I play blues-rock for a living. It’s like a vow of poverty.

It’s not enough to play a song: you have to inhabit it.

That’s right, I take vocal lessons – done it for years. There’s nothing wrong with it.

Being a niche kind of artist, you’re not going to make a lot of friends in the traditional music biz.

My goal for ‘Black Rock’ was pretty simple: I wanted to make the feel-good record of the summer.

I’m a self-loathing slide player. Some people like the way I play slide – I hate it.

I’m not a household name; I’m just a household name to guitar freaks.

At the end of the day, you really want to make sure that organic music, made by human beings, at least has a voice.

I’m an acoustic guitar owner – in the sense that I own them, and they sit at my house, and I never play them.

I love to collect guitars made in the 1950s. I like preserving and playing them.

Nothing I’m doing musically is revolutionary in any way, shape, or form.

I went through a period in my life where I didn’t have money to buy ramen noodles and peanut butter and jelly, but I also needed to go to the guitar store and buy strings and picks and polish and rags. I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t play guitar.