Steve Vai Quotes

When I started workin' with Muddy. That convinced me that I could get away with doin' the blues.

Growing up and playing guitar with my dad and stuff like really influenced me. It definitely must've had an impact on why Miley wanted to sing and why I wanted to sing and play guitar as well.

I'm not capable of wielding the guitar like Jimmy Page, one of my all-time favorite guitarists. My skill set is more based on the grinding, sort of human heartbeat - almost playing the guitar more like a drum.

I leave everyone to have their own opinions of my music and my influence - or not - on others.

I never tried to emulate The Beatles, and I never really wanted to be like The Rolling Stones. I never really felt that I had the look or the demeanor of veteran musicians.

In fact, the influence of Schoenberg may be overwhelming on his followers, but the significance of his art is to be identified with influences of a more subtle kind - not the system, but the aesthetic, of his art. I am quite conscious of the fact that my Chansons madécasses are in no way Schoenbergian, but I do not know whether I ever should have been able to write them had Schoenberg never written.

I was playing guitar before I heard The Beatles, but as I got older and listened to their tunes I realized they were amazing. They inspire me more now than they did when I was a kid and are still the greatest.

My dad bought me a guitar when I was very young, and I never looked back.

When children start to speak they find their own voice by imitating the sounds around them. It would follow that bands do the same. Bands will find their own voice at some point.

Music is in my DNA!

James Brown is the reason I play guitar.

Music is changing. I'm just doing what I'm doing, and hopefully in the next 20, 30 years, some kids can take what I'm doing and change it again. If the music doesn't move, then it's dead.

I have loved music so much from when I was little, and I don't know whether it was because I saw my dad doing it and then I got the idea; I don't know what came first... But I always had a hairbrush in the mirror singing. I was always with him backstage; I would go out and be pulled in for the last song.

People like Prince don't have to care about anything, but they care because they want music for the future to be great.

I've always loved music, but I never really played anything. After 'Walk the Line' and learning to play guitar, and having that sense of performing, I think that certainly opened the door for me, for music.

Music's been with me from the get-go. It was always around me as a kid. Dad got me my first guitar when I was 11 and, at school, if you wanted to be cool you had to be in a band.

If you listen to a lot of music, it gradually seeps into your consciousness or your unconsciousness and comes out in your music.

The thing about influence is that any composer worth anything will give you the same names.

As a musician, I don't think I'm the greatest guitar player. I'm a bigger fan of the drums than I am the guitar; I just happen to play guitar. I play drums almost every day at my house. I wrote a lot of songs behind the drum kit, just having the music and vocals in my head and playing the rhythm.

If you want to be negative about the whole thing you can say all guitar bands after the Beatles were just a waste of time because the Beatles were the best. I think it's far better to give new records a try.

It's funny, because music is one of those things it is natural to go into. You hear it so much growing up, it kind of permeates you and eventually you spew out some music of your own.

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.

My voice is a combination of how I grew up and what I was listening to growing up. I like a lot of different kinds of music and am always being inspired in different ways by different artists for different reasons.

Music was very influential on me as a kid.

I have spent over 60 years bent over a guitar and to know that I wrote 70 compositions that masters have recorded, that makes me feel so good and full, and proud and thankful to the good Lord.