I don't really get the same kinda romance that I would get from, like, jazz. And even to a lesser extent to rock 'n roll. Rock 'n roll has a romance to it - how can I put it? A very vulgar romance, but still a romance; whereas hip hop has more facade.
My first guitar, a Fender Jazz Master, I traded it in for a Les Paul Deluxe.
Joe Sample was one of my heroes. I met him at the Curacao Jazz festival, and I fanned out like he was the Beatles!
Fitzgerald coined the phrase the 'Jazz Age,' and now we're living in the Hip-Hop Age.
That's the thing about jazz: it's free flowing, it comes from your soul.
Hip-hop and jazz have always been intertwined. Even the G-funk thing. You listen to 'The Chronic,' there's flute solos and everything. It's always been there.
Then I took 8 years of French Horn, first jazz, and then classical.
It's pretty rare in jazz to have a full-on steady band.
I don't worry too much about the fundamentalist principles that are in almost any discussion about jazz.
When I play live in restaurants and cafes, I don't play my own stuff. I play jazz and 'American Songbook' standards, and I'll fuse it with top 40.
I've always gravitated toward technical music in general. I love jazz fusion.
In a lot of ways, Metallica is like a fusion band. It's not necessarily jazz or any of that, but the music is grooving.
I think my knowledge of music theory is rooted in jazz theory, and a lot of the writers of standards - Rodgers and Hart, and Gershwin.
The jazz boom was goin' on then so there was a lot happenin' in New York at that time.
I belonged to the Columbia Record Club, and that's where my records came from. For some reason, I was in the 'jazz' category. I got Benny Goodman records and Miles Davis, J.J. Johnson and Kai Winding, and that kind of stuff. I really was not a jazz guy at all, but I knew some of those names.
Gospel music rhythms are not African in origin, although I know that's what the jazz experts say.
My first Grammy wasn't even in a jazz category, but of course I was really excited. 'Rockit' was the beginning of kind of a new era for the whole hip-hop movement.
Jazz is a music of great achievements but speed and chops serve a different function in jazz.
I looked back on the roaring Twenties, with its jazz, 'Great Gatsby' and the pre-Code films as a party I had somehow managed to miss.
I had my jazz club and I had enough money. So I didn't have to write for my living.
