Guitarists From England

"And at the chime of the city clock Put up your road block. Hang on to your crown. For a stone in a tin can Is wealth to the city man Who leaves his armour down."

"I could have been a sailor, could have been a cook, A real live lover, could have been a book, I could have been a signpost, could have been a clock, As simple as a kettle, steady as a rock. I could be here and now, I would be, I should be, but how? I could have been one of these things first."

"Do you curse where you come from? Do you swear in the night? Will it mean much to you If I treat you right? Do you like what you're doing? Would you do it some more? Or will you stop once and wonder What you're doing it for? Hey slow Jane, make sense. Slow, slow, Jane, cross the fence."

"Please give me a second grace. Please give me a second face. I've fallen far down The first time around. Now I just sit on the ground in your way."

"Please tell me your second name. Please play me your second game. I've fallen so far For the people you are. I just need your star for a day."

"I'm growing old and I wanna go home. I'm growing old and I don't wanna know."

"The world hums on at its breakneck pace; People fly in their lifelong race. For them there's a future to find, But I think they're leaving me behind."

"Time has told me You're a rare, rare find, A troubled cure for a troubled mind."

"So I'll leave the ways that are making me be What I really don't want to be. Leave the ways that are making me love What I really don't want to love."

"Going to see the river man, Going to tell him all I can About the plan For lilac time. If he tells me all he knows 'Bout the way his river flows, And all night shows In summertime."

"This morning on Dartford station a guy I knew at primary school came up to me. He's got every record Chuck Berry made. He is called Mick Jagger."

"I don't encourage anybody to do what I do, you know? Why should you? More for me!"

"The idea of retiring is like killing yourself. It's almost like Hari Kari. I intend to live to a 100 and go down in history."

"I was number one on the Who's Likely To Die list for 10 years. I mean, I was really disappointed when I fell off the list."

"I thought rock and roll was an unassailable outlet for some pure and natural expression of rebellion. It used to be one channel you could take without ever havin' to kiss arse, you know?"

"I looked upon myself, in a sort of romantic and silly way, as like a laboratory."

"There are certain guys that are band players and there's certain guys that ain't. If there's anybody lazier than me, it's Eric (Clapton)."

"I thought it was ludicrous to take one of those gongs from the establishment...it's not what the Stones is about, is it? I don't want to step out on stage with someone wearing a fucking coronet and sporting the old ermine. I told Mick, It's a fucking paltry honour."

"What interested me about Chuck Berry was the way he could step out of the rhythm part with such ease, throwing in a nice, simple riff, and then drop straight into the feel of it again. We used to play a lot more rhythm stuff. We'd do away with the differences between lead and rhythm guitar. You can't go into a shop and ask for a "lead guitar". You're a guitar player, and you play a guitar."

"I'd play whenever I could get my hands on an electric guitar; I was trying to pick up rock'n'roll riffs and electric blues-the latest Muddy Waters. I'd spend hours and hours on the same track, back again, and back again."

"Yes, star-crossed in pleasure, the stream flows on by Yes, as we're sated in leisure, we watch it fly, yes And time waits for no one, and it won't wait for me... Time can tear down a building or destroy a woman's face Hours are like diamonds, don't let them waste Time waits for no one, no favors has he"

"I see a red door and I want it painted black No colors anymore, I want them to turn black I see the girls walk by dressed in their summer clothes I have to turn my head until my darkness goes I see a line of cars and they're all painted black With flowers and my love, both never to come back I see people turn their heads and quickly look away Like a new born baby, it just happens every day I look inside myself and see my heart is black I see my red door, I must have it painted black Maybe then I'll fade away and not have to face the facts It's not easy facing up, when your whole world is black"

"It was his unique syncopated playing style that defined rhythm guitar in rock 'n' roll."

"I know there is a cure for whatever bioterrorism they throw at us, I know there's one. And it lies within Keith Richards, I do know that. He is the only man on the planet that could go (imitates Keith snorting something) "Anthrax? All right! Doesn't go with my E. coli, but fuck." Keith is the only man who makes The Osbournes look fucking Amish. He's insane. I've seen Keith go to a drug dealer and the drug dealer's goin', "I'm out, man, I'm sorry. I have nothing left!" Supposedly, he goes to Switzerland and changes his blood. Not like one pint, but like a fucking Chevrolet, all of it. I just wanna know, who gets his blood? Some old Swiss man's going, "HEIDI!! We've gotta go on tour, you bitch! We've gotta pay for Mick's babies! COME ON!!!" Because I know this. I know that we may all be dead and gone, Keith will still be there with 5 cockroaches. Keith will go, "Ya know, I smoked your uncle! Did ya know that? Fucking crazy!""

"I was reading an interview with Keith Richards in a magazine and in the interview Keith Richards intimated that kids should not do drugs. Keith Richards! Says that kids should not do drugs! Keith, we can't do any more drugs because you already fucking did them all, alright! There's none left! We have to wait 'till you die and smoke your ashes! Jesus Christ! Talk about the pot and the fuckin' kettle."

"Keith Richards is shooting heroin into his eyeballs and still touring all right! I'm getting mixed signals! I picture nuclear war and two things surviving: Keith and cockroaches! (does Keith Richards impression) "Where did everybody go-o? I saw a bright light and thought we were on ...""

"...how come Keith Richards still walks? Explain that Mr. Surgeon General! You never mention Keith do you? Aah, a little hole in the theory there! Surgeon General says, "Drugs are bad, drugs are evil!...except for that guy, they work real good for him, -but the rest of you..."

"New Rule: Airplane black boxes must now be made out of Keith Richards. The man, who has taken more drugs than Whitney Houston, Rush Limbaugh and Robert Downey, Jr., combined, recently fell out of a tree, and then crashed a jet ski. And yet, somehow, that cigarette never fell out of his mouth. What is this guy still running on? I've got to know. Because I'm beginning to think the future of medicine isn't injecting stem cells, it's injecting heroin."

"Rap — so many words, so little said. What rap did that was impressive was to show there are so many tone-deaf people out there. All they need is a drum beat and somebody yelling over it and they're happy. There’s an enormous market for people who can't tell one note from another."

"If everybody who had a gun just shot themselves there wouldn’t be a problem."

"I felt in love, not with anything or anybody in particular but with everything."

"Rap music is just computerised crap. I listen to Top of the Pops and after three songs I feel like killing someone."

"He was annoyed 'cause I didn't say that he'd written one line of this song "Taxman." But I also didn't say how I wrote two lines of "Come Together" or three lines of "Eleanor Rigby," you know? I wasn't getting into any of that. I think, in the balance, I would have had more things to be niggled with him about than he would have had with me!"

"I had no ambition when I was a kid other than to play guitar and get in a rock 'n' roll band. I don't really like to be the guy in the white suit at the front. Like in the Beatles, I was the one who kept quiet at the back and let the other egos be at the front."

"It just annoyed me that people got so into the Beatles. "Beatles, Beatles, Beatles." It's not that I don't like talking about them. I've never stopped talking about them. It's "Beatles this, Beatles that, Beatles, Beatles, Beatles, Beatles." Then in the end, it's like "Oh, sod off with the Beatles," you know?"

"I always felt at home with Krishna. You see it was already a part of me. I think it's something that's been with me from my previous birth .... I'd rather be one of the devotees of God than one of the straight, so-called sane or normal people who just don't understand that man is a spiritual being, that he has a soul."

"My idea in "My Sweet Lord," because it sounded like a "pop song," was to sneak up on them a bit. The point was to have the people not offended by "Hallelujah," and by the time it gets to "Hare Krishna," they're already hooked, and their foot's tapping, and they're already singing along "Hallelujah," to kind of lull them into a sense of false security. And then suddenly it turns into "Hare Krishna," and they will all be singing that before they know what's happened, and they will think, "Hey, I thought I wasn't supposed to like Hare Krishna!""

"From the Hindu perspective, each soul is divine. All religions are branches of one big tree. It doesn't matter what you call Him just as long as you call. Just as cinematic images appear to be real but are only combinations of light and shade, so is the universal variety a delusion. The planetary spheres, with their countless forms of life, are naught but figures in a cosmic motion picture. One's values are profoundly changed when he is finally convinced that creation is only a vast motion picture and that not in, but beyond, lies his own ultimate reality."

"If there's a God, I want to see Him. It's pointless to believe in something without proof, and Krishna consciousness and meditation are methods where you can actually obtain God perception. In that way you can see, hear and play with God. Perhaps this may sound weird, but God is really there next to you."

"If you'd have asked me that question, 9 months ago, well, I would have been able to say, to come to America, to have a number one hit in America, and to play Carnegie Hall, to play the Palladium, to play in front of the Queen, and all that. ... The things we've done, they were our ambitions, say 9 months ago."

"Try to realize it's all within yourself, No one else can make you change. And to see you're really only very small And life flows in within you and without you."

"Without going out of your door, You can know all things on earth. Without looking out of your window you could know the ways of heaven. The farther one travels. the less one knows, the less one really knows."

"If you're listening to this song You may think the chords are going wrong But they're not We just wrote it like that"

"...the more I learn the less I know..."

"Do what you want to do, And go where you're going to. Think for yourself 'Cause I won't be there with you."

"I look at you all see the love there that's sleeping While my guitar gently weeps."

"I don't know why nobody told you how to unfold your love I don't know how someone controlled you They bought and sold you."

"I look at the world and I notice it’s turning. While my guitar gently weeps. With every mistake we must surely be learning, Still my guitar gently weeps."

"I don't know how you were diverted You were perverted too. I don't know how you were inverted No one alerted you."

"Little darling, It's been a long cold lonely winter. Little darling, It feels like years since it's been here. Here comes the sun..."