Jimi Hendrix quotes:

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Who I am as a guitarist is defined by my failure to become Jimi Hendrix. -- John Mayer
I was listening to Jimi Hendrix; I just admire his artistry and creativity as an artist. -- LL Cool J
Secretly, I wanted to look like Jimi Hendrix, but I could never quite pull it off. -- Bryan Ferry
The road has taken a lot of the great ones: Hank Williams, Buddy Holly, Otis Redding, Janis, Jimi Hendrix, Elvis. -- Robbie Robertson
Man, I'm the No. 1 living and breathing rock star. I am Axl Rose; I am Jim Morrison; I am Jimi Hendrix. -- Kanye West
I know about Woodstock probably as much as your average person who is over 30, where I'd know Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Grateful Dead. -- Demetri Martin
I was very influenced by Eric Clapton and Jimi Hendrix, both of whom I had the pleasure of playing with and becoming friends with. -- Mick Taylor
I love rock and roll. Sometimes I feel like I was born in the wrong decade because I love Led Zeppelin and Jimi Hendrix and... those are my bands. -- Marisa Miller
When I hear myself singing, I hear Iggy Pop and Jimi Hendrix. There's a conversational thing going on. I suppose it depends on which The Pretenders song you're listening to. -- Chrissie Hynde
You're never going to see the fat Elvis in me. People I admired like Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix and John Belushi all died at 27. I've got jeans older than that. -- Jon Bon Jovi
Since I was seventeen I thought I might be a star. I'd think about all my heroes, Charlie Parker, Jimi Hendrix... I had a romantic feeling about how these people became famous. -- Jean-Michel Basquiat
What I wanted to do in rock 'n roll was merge poetry with sonic scapes, and the two people who had contributed so much to that were Jimi Hendrix and Jim Morrison. -- Patti Smith
Lauryn Hill, P-Funk, Marvin Gaye, Public Enemy - I have a very diverse palate for music. I can go from Judy Garland to Jimi Hendrix to Stevie Wonder to Rachmaninoff. I just love great music. -- Janelle Monae
I am a leader. Leaders always get heat. They're always going against the grain. Jimi Hendrix got heat; Bob Marley got heat; Miles Davis got heat. Every great artist got heat. Heat means you're doing something right. -- Ziggy Marley
When I came into Metallica, I had to do justice to Cliff's work, but I also had to put my own signature on it. No one could be Cliff Burton; Cliff Burton was the Jimi Hendrix of bass. -- Jason Newsted
I am a leader, so leaders always get heat. They're always going against the grain. Jimi Hendrix got heat; Bob Marley got heat; Miles Davis got heat. Every great artist got heat. Heat means you're doing something right. -- Ziggy Marley
I also played with Jimi Hendrix. Jimi would come down and sit in with Retaliation and we would have a ball. He offered me the gig with him at 20 pounds a week, which at that point, was like 60 bucks. -- Aynsley Dunbar
You ready? I have gold teeth, I have braids, I'm wearing Rick Owens moon boots, I have rips in my denim, a biker vest, I love artsy girls, my favourite artists are Jimi Hendrix and John Lennon. I'm obsessed with being different. -- ASAP Rocky
Music television is all about the media-oriented version of what it is to be a rock star; it's not about what Bob Dylan or Jimi Hendrix were about - which included great images, sure, but they had spiritual and political and revolutionary content, too. -- Patti Smith
The music I want to hear in my head sounds somewhere between Jimi Hendrix and Massive Attack. It's not really like my dad, but there will always be similarities because we have the same vocal cords, and I learnt the guitar the way he taught me. -- Dhani Harrison
You can take things that Jimi Hendrix took, from Curtis Mayfield or from Buddy Guy for example, because we are all children of everything, even Picasso. But if you want to stand out, you have to learn to crystallize your existence and create your own fingerprints. -- Carlos Santana
My greatest influence is Jimi Hendrix, and if he's been reincarnated, or if he's looking down, sideways, or looking up, I just wanted to tell him that I love him and thank him for opening doors for me. I just wanted to make it beautiful for him. -- Meshell Ndegeocello
When I was designing, I had in mind Jimi Hendrix, and I could hardly find skinny indie black kids to wear my clothes. I remember one telling me he had to swap his skinny jeans for baggy ones in the subway before going home, so he wouldn't get in trouble in his neighborhood. -- Hedi Slimane
I'm like a middle-aged person; when my friends go on about modern bands, I don't know what they are talking about. I'm into rock n' roll, like Jimi Hendrix. Not so much because of my parents, who used to play a lot of Nina Simone and older blues, but my brother and sister. -- Georgia May Jagger
I watched Janis one time - we opened for her - and that's the only time I ever saw her. We opened for Jimi Hendrix. I got to stand on the side of the stage and watch him for two hours and then he died. But I got the essence before they left. -- Stevie Nicks
After months of playing air guitar to 'Free Bird', what really got me into guitar was watching a documentary about Jimi Hendrix and picking up the Woodstock soundtrack. Listening to his version of 'Star Spangled Banner' and 'Purple Haze.' My brother played acoustic guitar and, idolising him, I thought, 'I'm going to get a guitar.' -- Kirk Hammett
Jimi Hendrix's music was escapism. -- Perry Farrell
Jimi Hendrix isn't as good as me! -- David Gilmour
I would love to play Jimi Hendrix. -- Chadwick Boseman
Jimi Hendrix was the most exciting guitarist I've ever heard. -- Brian Jones
Jimi Hendrix played loud and free, Sergeant Pepper was real to me. -- Al Stewart
[My favourite song is] "All Along the Watchtower." The Jimi Hendrix cover. -- Kanye West
If I could hang out with Jimi Hendrix, it wouldn't be over dinner. -- Slash
I invented rock & roll. Jimi Hendrix was my guitar player. James Brown was my vocalist. -- Little Richard
I just chased bands all over the country. The biggest one I saw was Jimi Hendrix. -- Cassandra Peterson
Wong Kar-Wai is a really great inspiration. He's always referred to as the Jimi Hendrix of filmmaking. -- Gus Van Sant
I wanted to be the greatest woman guitarist alive. I had fantasies about being a female Jimi Hendrix. -- Phoebe Snow
I ended up spending some time with Jimi Hendrix and hanging out with him, and that was beyond awesome. -- Cassandra Peterson
Fame has killed more very talented guys than drugs. Jimi Hendrix didn't die of an overdose, he died of fame. -- Keith Richards
I'm the No. 1 living and breathing rock star. I am Axl Rose; I am Jim Morrison; I am Jimi Hendrix. -- Kanye West
I wanted to be Jimi Hendrix's drummer when I was in high school, but I graduated in 1970, the year he died. -- Narada Michael Walden
I feel close to people like Jimi Hendrix because I connect with his music. Not the man but what he did. -- Henry Rollins
Jimi Hendrix could play better than our best guys and he did it while he was dancing while being completely outrageous. -- David Crosby
I grew up listening to albums by Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin and Jimi Hendrix, and they all worked on that multi-layered level. -- Dave Navarro
Jimi Hendrix once said, 'You will never hear surf music again.' Well, tonight, you will hear 'serf' music again -- S-E-R-F music. -- Jello Biafra
I say I'm Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin all wrapped up into one. If I die early ... I'll be just like those guys. -- Dennis Rodman
Visiting my mind is like visiting the Hermes factory. Sh*t is real. You're not going to find a chink. It's 100,000 per cent Jimi Hendrix. -- Kanye West
I started out playing guitar because Jimi Hendrix was my hero, so my roots were really based on Jimi Hendrix and his style of playing. -- Joe Satriani
QBert is pretty much the Jimi Hendrix of DJing. He is so far advanced. So far ahead of everybody else. He's like Yoda! Like the guru. -- DJ Jazzy Jeff
Two of the guys that were honorary Vampires - Jim Morrison and Jimi Hendrix - had died at 27. And they were certainly archangels in our group. -- Alice Cooper
There is more value in placing a flower in a rifle barrel than making war. As Jimi Hendrix used to say, musical notes have more importance than bullets. -- Carlos Santana
I've been blessed. I grew up and played and worked and created with the Freddie Mercury, the Jimi Hendrix, the Keith Richards, the John Paul Jones of my generation -- Steven Adler
I've been blessed. I grew up and played and worked and created with the Freddie Mercury, the Jimi Hendrix, the Keith Richards, the John Paul Jones of my generation. -- Steven Adler
Richard Lloyd of Television is one of my favorite guitarists. His mentor was Jimi Hendrix when he was just 14. Jimi was always pounding everything he knew into that kid. -- Tina Weymouth
The best thing I ever heard was in the '60s. I heard Jimi Hendrix play 'I Can Hear The Grass Grow' after a rehearsal, and it was brilliant. -- Roy Wood
I'm going to be a superstar musician, kill myself, and go out in a flame of glory. I want to be rich and famous and kill myself like Jimi Hendrix. -- Kurt Cobain
I was very friendly with Jimi Hendrix because my boyfriend at the time, Tommy Weber, was making a film about him, so I would go to all of his shows. -- Charlotte Rampling
I was very drawn to music of all types, from Beethoven to Jimi Hendrix. There were musicians and composers who obviously were expressing a vision that was beyond the mundane. -- Frederick Lindemann, 1st Viscount Cherwell
She's the kind of person who either dies tragically at twenty-seven, like Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin, or else grows up to win, like, the first-ever Nobel Prize for Awesome. -- John Green
I couldn't believe how good Jimi Hendrix was It was a really difficult thing for me to deal with, but I just had to surrender and say, 'This is fantastic.' -- Eric Clapton
... you watch Jimi Hendrix literally reinvent the instrument. He was playing from somewhere else. He was really a kind of hybrid, and I can't even begin to imagine where he came from -- Steve Vai
When I think of artists that I would have loved to work with, it's Jimi Hendrix. And Steve McQueen. He's not a rock star, but he's kind of a rock star to me. -- John Varvatos
I love the Beatles, and when I was very young, I had young parents, so Led Zeppelin and Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix and the Beatles constantly were big influences on my life. -- Phil Anselmo
There is no creative expression of artistic value that has ever been produced by ex-drunkards and ex-drug-addicts. Who the hell would bother with a Rolling Stones without booze or with a Jimi Hendrix without heroin? -- Lars von Trier
Stop saying drug use makes people lazy. Jimi Hendrix did a lot of drugs, even though he's been dead for forty years, he's still making new records. Suck on that, Partnership for a Drug-Free America! -- Bill Maher
The quality of our lives is diminished every time we lose a great artist. It's a different world without Sam Cooke, Otis Redding, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, Curtis Mayfield, Brian Jones and the rest. -- Steven Van Zandt
I liked a lot of the things other people liked - Jimi Hendrix, The Beatles, Van Halen, AC/DC - but if I compared it to my dad's music, there just seemed to be elements missing. -- Dweezil Zappa
I think the first person who kind of broke my mind was probably Jimi Hendrix. Listening to him opened my mind up to where you can take music and how far you can take rock n' roll. -- King Tuff
Jimi Hendrix was just so fluid. His hands were connected to his soul, you know? His playing was just so emotional. You could feel the fire, you could feel the blues. You could feel the sadness. It's unbelievable. -- Lenny Kravitz
I used to live in Seattle, as did Jimi Hendrix and Bruce Lee. I lived near the arboretum. Very often I would take walks late at night by Lake Washington, because I found it very easy to meditate there. -- Frederick Lindemann, 1st Viscount Cherwell
I have been involved in music since 1972 when I started managing two artists from The Jimi Hendrix Band. My family has been involved in music for years, so it's kind of in my blood. I just wish I could sing! -- Earl Monroe
In 1974, when I started working with the material that became 'Horses,' a lot of our great voices had died. We'd lost Jimi Hendrix and Jim Morrison and Janis Joplin, and people like Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King and Malcolm X. -- Patti Smith
And um, when I came back to England I put a very complex soundtrack on it, featuring everyone from Jimi Hendrix, right through to Neil Diamond, you know, everybody that was kind of popular who was kind of popular at that time. -- Gerald Scarfe
I went into the house. I put on Jimi Hendrix's 'Red House' at full volume, filled the glass to the brim with rum, without ice, and went back to the terrace. To gaze at the night and the dark sea and the night. -- Pedro
About Jimi Hendrix - although his playing is at an uber-level, his voice is quite lo-fi and normal, like a regular person singing in the shower, and this makes his music much better than if he was just a technical player and singer. -- Jeffrey Lewis
I have to have music playing constantly. It creates the tone and mood for anything you are doing. I specifically love rock, and Jimi Hendrix is one of my favorite artists. My favorite song is 'Red House,' because it's heavy on the blues. -- Marisa Miller
So to compare the Beatles, obviously the Beatles are the Beatles, but in hip-hop terms, Tribe is the Beatles. Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five are the Beatles. Big Daddy Kane is Jimi Hendrix. It means that much to people that grew up with it. -- Michael Rapaport
Jimi Hendrix is the greatest guitar player in the world... a guy who mastered that instrument. It was talking when he played. And when he did a solo, he made the guitar cry - or made it sound like it was coming from the devil's amplifier. -- Bruno Mars
There are people who are great technical players like Eric Clapton, and there are people who are great intuitive songwriters like Daniel Johnston. There are sometimes people who are great at both the technique and the creativity, the two sides of the coin, maybe Jimi Hendrix. -- Jeffrey Lewis
18th September, 1970; Jimi Hendrix dies. I'm still on the football team when I get the news. So I take my helmet off and confront the coach to tell him I'm quitting the team. In a moment of brilliance he gives me one look and says "OK". -- Joe Satriani
I'm a rock 'n' roll baby. I was one of the last actually born into rock, in the middle of it. My mother was a promoter, so I grew up with rock stars. When I was little, people like Jimi Hendrix were walking around in the living room. -- Ari Up
Blues artists now try and stay in a box. Back in the day at all the clubs you would see James Brown, Jimi Hendrix, The Isley Brothers, Little Richard and Etta James all play the same venues. It was a mix of funk, soul, blues and rock 'n' roll. -- Phil Collen
As far as rock groups, I really like Stone Temple Pilots. As for classical composers, it's Bach. I love Paganini, too, the Italian composer who would break strings during a performance and finish playing on just one string. Someone I would have loved to play with is Jimi Hendrix. -- Matt Schulze
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I felt every part of that animal music, felt it eat me up and spit me out, and what emerged was a me a thousand times more powerful than Piper Vaughan. I was Piper Vaughan, guitar hero - spiritual descendant of Jimi Hendrix and proponent of pure anarchy. And I ROCKED. -- Antony John
Jimi Hendrix is very important. He's my idol. He sort of epitomizes, from his presentation on stage, the whole works of a rock star. There's no way you can compare him. You either have the magic or you don't. There's no way you can work up to it. There's nobody who can take his place. -- Freddie Mercury
I'm not a star. I'll never be a Frank Sinatra or Elvis Presley or a Ray Charles. I'm just an imitator, man. I'm doing a very bad imitation on the bass of Jerry Jemmott, Bernard Odum, Jimmy Fielder, Jimmy Blanton, Igor Stravinsky, Jimi Hendrix, John Coltrane, James Brown, Charlie Parker... the cats, man. I'm just backing up the cats. -- Jaco Pastorius
I am the flying saucer man from another world trapped on yours until they come to rescue me. One day the saucer will land. Jimi Hendrix and John Coltrane will open the hatch and tell me to get in before someone tries to blow up the ship. I'll just ask what took them so long. Within seconds we'll be out of here. -- Henry Rollins
The only thing I ever really wanted was a Strat .. I started playing guitar after seeing Jimi Hendrix on TV the day he died...then I got Deep Purples' Fireball album which was also a big influence .. I have a collection of more than 200 of them that includes Strats from every year since March 1954 - the first month the Strat was made -- Yngwie Malmsteen
Music really influenced me when I was growing up. I did go through a Jimi Hendrix phase. My hair was naturally quite afro, and I wore low-slung jeans with very high heels. Siouxsie and the Banshees had a lot to answer for. I was in a top hat with peacock feathers and thigh-high black boots. I was 17 -- old enough to know better. -- Helen McCrory
Kurt (Cobain) was a fan of my standup, which was pretty weird. I know when people hear that, it's kind of like finding out that Jimi Hendrix really liked Buddy Hackett, but he interviewed me at a college radio station before they broke and did Bleach. And then, like, about two years later, I was opening for Nirvana at these huge sports arenas. -- Bobcat Goldthwait
The Marshall guitar amplifier doesn't just get louder when you turn it up. It distorts the sound to produce a whole range of new harmonics, effectively turning a plucked string instrument into a bowed one. A responsible designer might try to overcome this limitation - probably the engineers at Marshall tried, too. But that sound became the sound of, among others, Jimi Hendrix. That sound is called electric guitar. -- Brian Eno
I knew Jimi (Hendrix) and I think that the best thing you could say about Jimi was: there was a person who shouldn't use drugs. -- Frank Zappa
There are famous examples of people who just had really strange ways - [Jimi] Hendrix being the biggest example of that. Or someone like Keith Richards, he just has a really idiosyncratic style. -- Bryce Dessner

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