I realized that it’s all really one, that John Lennon was correct. We utilize the music to bring down the walls of Berlin, to bring up the force of compassion and forgiveness and kindness between Palestines, Hebrews. Bring down the walls here in San Diego, Tijuana, Cuba.
Music rearranges your molecular structure.
There’s never one sunrise the same or one sunset the same.
Everything is a battlefield. If you fight with anger, you are part of the problem. If you fight with joy, you’re part of the solution.
Live up to your convictions. You walk in grace or you walk in fear. You can’t have it both ways.
Most people don’t have that willingness to break bad habits. They have a lot of excuses and they talk like victims.
If you stay in your heart you will always be inspired and if you are inspired you will always be enthusiastic. There is nothing more contagious on this planet as enthusiasm.
I realised a long time ago that instrumental music speaks a lot more clearly than English, Spanish, Yiddish, Swahili, any other language. Pure melody goes outside time.
If our history can challenge the next wave of musicians to keep moving and changing, to keep spiritually hungry and horny, that’s what it’s all about.
Ever since I was a child I’ve always been very attracted to melodies. Whether I hear Jeff Beck, a choir, an ocean or the wind, there’s always a melody in there.
The music of Hendrix wakes people up to their possibilities. It’s more than just dreaming about being a guitar hero.
There’s a melody in everything. And once you find the melody, then you connect immediately with the heart. Because sometimes English or Spanish, Swahili or any language gets in the way. But nothing penetrates the heart faster than the melody.
The best part of touring, still, is touching people’s hearts and igniting my band and igniting the people into what you call a spiritual revelation is sound and emotion.
You’re always cursing, you’re always praying and you’re always making love. It ain’t do-re-mi-fa-so-la-ti-do.
Everybody sooner or later has to drop the luggage and the baggage of illusions.
I can show you that I have played with just about every jazz musician, every African musician, every blues musician. It’s not like I’m cashing in on a false concept. This is what I do.
When a baby comes you can smell two things: the smell of flesh, which smells like chicken soup, and the smell of lilies, the flower of another garden, the spiritual garden.
I have come to the conclusion – and I don’t know why it took me so long, but nevertheless, I’m here now – that a lot of people tell me they don’t get enough guitar on my albums. So I decided to do an album where the guitar would be the singer, playing the melody.
I knuckle down with my demons, and with my weaknesses.
I have been accused of being a very simplistic, very lyrical player, and that’s okay. That just comes from the blues, which is my background. But every day you wake up and transcend. You can’t ever rest on your laurels.