Guitarists From The United States

"If I could tell you something, I would tell you it all"

"While the things I do kill me, they just tell me to relax"

"Words may move but they’re never moving fast enough"

"Bring you down, can't bring you down Bring you down, can't hear the sound Run through the river and head to town Pretty little moon with it's head hung down Chin up. Cheer up."

"All the sweetest winds they blow across the south"

"One night at the diner over eggs, Over easy she showed me the length of her legs, But that gold plated cross on her neck, it was real And you don't get that kind of money from pushing a meal."

"I feel just like a map Without a single place to go of interest And I'm further north than south If I could shut my mouth She'd probably like this."

"Do you remember stormy winter? Well button up your coat, one's comin' soon"

"Sleep now and your angels will come, dear"

"These things inside me, they repeat like broken records Spinning pretty things behind my eyes And when I can't look at you I can paint your picture perfectly in my mind And when I get old I'm gonna miss you all the time."

"As a man I ain’t never been much for sunny days. I’m as calm as a fruit stand in New York and maybe as strange. But when the color goes out of my eyes, it’s usually the change. But damn, Sam, I love a woman that rains."

"I would've held your mother's hand on the day you was born. She runs through my veins like a long black river and rattles my cage like a thunderstorm."

"See her smiling at him? That used to be me, and I could find her in a thunderstorm just by the way that the rain would fall."

"There's something in the way she eases my mind And lays me across the bed till I close my eyes. Stirs me in the morning till I can't ever be satisfied. I leave Carolina every night in my dreams, Like the girls that try to love me that I only leave. Rock me like a baby doll and hold me to your chest, But I'm always moving too fast."

"I should've died a hundred thousand times, Teetering stoned off the side of a building. Nobody loved me and nobody even tried You can't hang on to something that won't stop moving. Singing and dancing to them nighttime songs."

"She's got the brown eyes, yeah, and they're pretty as hell, And they'll burn through your shirt if you're holding her still. She's got a lighter, and a lit cigarette, And if you're making her smile, that's just as high as you can get."

"Just a nobody girl With a radar to the scene. When the emptiness finds you You find all the numbers you need. You say you follow your heart Well, honey, you're just being lost. You could you follow your gut But how much would it cost?"

"Real. Real like a plastic bouquet That thrives on the smoke from an old fireplace And dies every night with her face on the news. Nobody cries, they just smoke and stare and their shoes. The only difference is, The only difference is, Nobody can cry - It's hard to do For most folks, without a reason why."

"If I had a reed made of lightning I could blow the sax all night... I don't know where one would acquire a reed made of lightning but I would imagine that Bill Clinton has one."

""Most of my songs are about ladies. This one's about ladies metaphorically. There are some of my songs that are about the power of lightning."

"They carved your name into a stone and then they put it in the ground. I run my fingers through the grooves when no one's around, Drink till I'm sick and I talk to myself in the dog days of the summer. Then I feel you coming but I don't know how..."

"It’s like—I don’t know, sometimes it’s like chasing a pretty girl on the beach. And things I never thought I could do…I can do."

"I was doing soundcheck, and Rancid was playing over there. That's some good shit. Actually, it wasn't Rancid, it was the opening band, the Distillers. I was like, screaming and shit. Running around. I had no one to slam dance with. I was very lonesome. It was very singer-songwriter."

"When you get the time Sit down and write me a letter When you're feeling better Drop me a lineI wanna know how it all works out I had a feeling we were fading out I didn't know that people faded out That people faded out so fast I wanna show you all the things I got inside But you know those parts of me died Just like us they faded out They faded out so fast When there was love enough left to fix it But there it is"

"Forever only takes its toll on some"

"I've got maybe five or ten jean jackets with jeans. I can pack three to four pairs of denim jeans, five T-shirts, ten Western-style shirts, and two ties and just buy socks when I get there. That, a Walkman, two books, and some records, and I'm out the door for a year. Not a problem. Doesn't freak me out at all. Usually, if you're thinking about your clothes too much, you're probably not high enough."

"And I'm tired of living here in this hotel, Snow and the rain falling through the sheets. In fact, I'm tired of 23rd Street. Strung out like some Christmas lights Out there in the Chelsea night."

"What happens is, people get a little taste of fame, and they get used to having things go that way, and the ego really kicks in. They'll do whatever it takes to stay there. They get addicted, and they make decisions that don't have anything to do with music. You get big like that, and people will maybe come and see you once. It never lasts. It's not real. I'll tell you this - it's fucking real behind a guitar."

"It's not very fashionable nowadays to have a philosophy that demands a lot of life. I tend to be drawn to people who are emotional - now they'd be called 'crazy'. Pollock, Jasper Johns, Toulouse-Lautrec. People said, 'They're off their nut!' Was Faulkner off his nut because he stayed in his house for eight months at a time writing books, and then you'd find him drunk up in a tree, making out with some old black woman? I think that's fuckin' great!"

"I want to make sure I'm with a girl that's a good kisser, and that when I wake up, I have coffee and a cigarette. That's all I really want out of life. That, and world domination."

"My lifestyle changed when this wonderful person came into my life. I couldn't sleep for years. All of a sudden, I don't know why or how, but I slept."

"I quit drinking every night, at 1:30 A.M."

"I'm sort of planting Post-It notes all over my psyche. Do not skateboard wasted. Do not buy $10,000 rugs. Be careful what you say to journalists. You don't have to stay up until 7 A.M. - tomorrow is a new day."

"It's emotional warfare telling the people we love, the most, the truth about ourselves."

"From the moment I first heard Lauryn Hill's song about becoming a mother, I knew that I would name my child Zion. "Now the joy of my world is in Zion / Now the joy of my world is in Zion," she sang. I wept out loud the first time I heard the song. It touched me to my soul."

"If everyone is a product of this society, who will say the things that need to be said, and do the things that need to be done, without compromise? Truth will never start out popular in a world more concerned with marketability than righteousness. It will initially suffer ridicule and even violence — yet ultimately it is undeniable. All of humanity is living in a dream world, but suffering real consequences."

"How you gonna win when you ain't right within?"

"Every breath I take is a tribute to John Kerry."

"Tom’s late-'90s/early 2000s tone was fairly simple—usually distorted, with clean breaks and not many effects. His playing, whilst not complicated, was incredibly effective. He let chords ring out at the start of verses, employed palm-muting, helped bring the dynamics down so that bridges and choruses stood out more, played jangly single-note riffs, used octave melodies to counter the vocals, etc."

"I didn’t quit that band because I wanted to. I quit that band because I had to. Because when people give you an ultimatum about your family, what are you going to do? But the problem was no one was being truthful at the time."

"But really we wanted to do something that was more kind of different than what most punk rock bands are doing right now, where they are all dressing in black and acting pissed or sad or wearing make-up. Its just not what we are into."

"I'm going to usher in this entire new culture of the youth, obsessed with the future."

"Despite winning a global crossover audience and influencing legions of guitarists, Pat Metheny has described himself as a fusion ‘reactionary’. He deplores what’s often thought of as jazz-rock – bogus intensity, raunchy distortion and interminable one-chord solos. Fusion Metheny-style is lyrical, many-sided, an extension of his quest for maximum expressive scope and his sound: a warm, focused attack, with a kind of soaring radiance enhanced by his innovative use of electronics. A Metheny solo is a flood of melody, a mixture of ecstatic vision and consummate technique."

"Much like the late, great Allan Holdsworth, Pat Metheny doesn’t so much play jazz as he does his own unearthly variant of it – a kind that no-one else can come close to imitating – which explains why he’s been headhunted by superstars like David Bowie and Joni Mitchell. Metheny is as dimensional as a guitar player can get, having applied his jaw-dropping techniques and theoretical knowledge to all kinds of situations."

"More and more as time has gone on, I realize that playing is really more about listening than it is about playing."

"[cries] I just want my friend back!"

"I… am Steve."

"Hey guys, there isn't gonna be a Plan B. You called me in to bring the thunder and that's what I'm gonna do."

"It's great to be here at the VMA's! I know this show's been a little sketchy in the past. But there isn't gonna be any problems tonight...is there Eminem?! Not here, someone should've told me."

"You know what I just realized? Jack Black...Jack White! [points to Jack White]"