John McLaughlin famous quotes

04-17-2025

Only in spontaneity can we be who we truly are.
-- John McLaughlin

#Jazz #Spontaneity
I find Indian music very funky. I mean it's very soulful, with their own kind of blues. But it's the only other school on the planet that develops improvisation to the high degree that you find in jazz music. So we have a lot of common ground.
-- John McLaughlin

#Music #Mean #School
The whole point of working and practicing your whole life is so that you're ready when that moment arrives; when the inspiration arrives, you are ready to be at the disposal of inspiration.
-- John McLaughlin

#Inspiration #Musician #Life Is
Music speaks from spirit to spirit and in that sense you could call it a true spiritual language.
-- John McLaughlin

#Spiritual #Musician #Language
When I hear a great musician, I can feel his life inside the music.
-- John McLaughlin

#Funny #Inspiring #Musician
You can have the greatest player in terms of mastering an instrument and you could be yawning your head off when you hear them. So, it's not what you do, but the way you're doing it and in the end that's all that we have
-- John McLaughlin

#Player #Yawning #Way
If I can get out of the way, if I can be pure enough, if I can be selfless enough, and if I can be generous and loving and caring enough to abandon what I have in my own preconceived silly notions of what I think I am - and become truly who in fact I am, which is really just another child of God - then the music can really use me. And therein lies my fulfillment. That's when the music starts to happen.
-- John McLaughlin

#Children #Lying #Silly
Interplay and interaction are the integral parts of music - they're as important as the notes.
-- John McLaughlin

#Important #Musician #Notes
Music that touches the transcendental aspect of a human being is reserved for a marginal audience
-- John McLaughlin

#Transcendental #Aspect #Audience
Spirituality is worthless if it's not practical. Music is my work. I am a musician.
-- John McLaughlin

#Musician #Spirituality #Music Is
For me, rhythm is a type of divine mathematics in a way. No matter where you're from, we can all understand the mathematics of rhythm. I try to apply this mathematical thinking to my playing.
-- John McLaughlin

#Thinking #Trying #Matter
I practice all the scales. Everyone should know lots of scales. Actually, I feel there are only scales. What is a chord, if not the notes of a scale hooked together?
-- John McLaughlin

#Guitar #Practice #Together
I believe everybody is spiritual and no one is any more spiritual than anyone else.
-- John McLaughlin

#Spiritual #Believe #I Believe
I'm never trying to preach to anybody with my music, but I'm aware of the universal nature of the human experience and I try to reach out and connect with people in that manner.
-- John McLaughlin

#People #Trying #Human Experience
My entire life is dedicated to music, and at my age, that makes a lot of years! But all the work and dedication is only that I'm able to forget myself and let the music do the 'talking.'
-- John McLaughlin

#Dedication #Talking #Years
Everyone can lock into the rhythm on a tune. It's organic in nature. It connects the band as a whole and connects the band to the audience.
-- John McLaughlin

#Tunes #Locks #Band
There are two kinds of success. One is musical or artistic and the other is commercial.
-- John McLaughlin

#Two #Musical #Kind
The music dictates to me which instrument I use. I'm basically waiting for orders as it were.
-- John McLaughlin

#Order #Waiting #Use
When you open box after box of old comics and they're ALL "Archie," you have suffered a trauma from which it is difficult to ever recover.
-- John McLaughlin

#Boxes #Trauma #Difficult
Absolutely, all guitars are different. You can go into a store and grab five guitars, all the same model, and even though they look identical they're not identical. They play differently, they feel a bit different and they sound slightly different.
-- John McLaughlin

#Guitar #Play #Looks
In a way records are like paintings. Instead of using paints and brushes we use sounds and instruments.
-- John McLaughlin

#Way #Sound #Use
I think I'm built like a painter. I have friends who are painters and they reflect a similar psychological attitude towards their work. They don't know what's coming next, they just wait for the message, for orders to come and then off they go on their next project.
-- John McLaughlin

#Attitude #Thinking #Order
I'm not any different from you or the guy down the street or across the globe, we're all connected in some way and hopefully my music can integrate that feeling of human connectedness.
-- John McLaughlin

#Guy #Feelings #Different
Question: Does it frost Jackson, Jesse Jackson, that someone like Obama, who fits the stereotype blacks once labeled as an Oreo -- a black on the outside, a white on the inside -- that an Oreo should be the beneficiary of the long civil rights struggle which Jesse Jackson spent his lifetime fighting for?
-- John McLaughlin

#Struggle #Fighting #Rights
The mathematics of rhythm are universal. They don't belong to any particular culture.
-- John McLaughlin

#Culture #Mathematics #Rhythm

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