Andy Summers Quotes

• What I wanted to do was play the guitar but I don’t like instrumental rock. I think it is tripe.

  Andy Summers

• There was a period when I’d just come out of college where I’d been playing classical guitar and I suddenly realised that it wasn’t what I wanted to do with the rest of my life.

  Andy Summers

• The most obvious thing you can’t do with a guitar synthesizer is to really sound like a guitar.

  Andy Summers

• Of course the playing is important but writing and the establishing of what you are going for is prime too.

  Andy Summers

• My favorite sounds are the high, spacey ones that are very ambient.

  Andy Summers

• More recently, I used guitar synthesizer extensively on the two albums I did with Robert Fripp.

  Andy Summers

• It’s hard to avoid the past but one goes forward.

  Andy Summers

• It’s been very hard for the guitar as a serious synthesizer to compete with keyboards.

  Andy Summers

• It is not very practical in today’s world when you tour all over the place having a big band.

  Andy Summers

• It accumulates over the years and I’ve led so many bands of my own now and forced myself into new situations… You would hope that you play better and better – until you just get too feeble to do it anymore.

  Andy Summers

• In The Police, in a trio situation – which I’ve come back to now – it’s just so wide open that it does actually provide this arena where you can play with a certain freedom.

  Andy Summers

• If you’re a guitarist, you should not be intimidated by using your instrument as a synthesizer, but you shouldn’t feel that you have to own one, either.

  Andy Summers

• If the guitar synthesizer is really going to stand as a synthesizer on its own, it needs to develop a more characteristic sound; I don’ think it’s gotten there yet.

  Andy Summers

• If I’m playing a violin thing, for instance, I tend to respond to that sound with the way I finger.

  Andy Summers

• I’ve got four or five records in my head at a time that I try to work on and I would like to do a guitar trio record next – since The Police I’ve mostly made records with keyboards.

  Andy Summers

• I’m just trying to avoid any sort of generic kind of music – I don’t want to do generic jazz or fusion.

  Andy Summers

• I’m better for it and I prefer to keep things simple and see what sounds I can get out of my head and hands rather than relying on a sound that someone else created.

  Andy Summers

• I would like to play with electronic keyboards again.

  Andy Summers

• I was totally into jazz in my teens.

  Andy Summers

• I think we are coming to a new era where people will record much faster.

  Andy Summers

Andy Summers (29)

Birth:	31st December, 1942
Nationality:	British
Profession:	Musician, Photographer, Record Producer, Songwriter

About

Andy Summers is an English multi-instrumentalist, born in Poulton-le-Fylde, Lancashire, England. Best known as the guitarist for rock band The Police, he has also recorded twelve solo albums, collaborated with many other artists, toured extensively under his own name, published several books, and composed several film scores. Rolling Stone magazine ranked Summers as the eighty fifth greatest guitarist of all time. Summers' professional career began in the mid-1960s in London as the guitarist for the British rhythm and blues band Zoot Money's Big Roll Band, which eventually came under the influence of the spreading psychedelic scene and evolved into the acid rock group Dantalian's Chariot. Summers achieved international fame as the guitarist for The Police, which he joined in 1977, replacing original guitarist Henri Padovani. During his tenure with the band, Summers twice won the Grammy Award for Best Rock Instrumental Performance, first with "Reggatta de Blanc", and then with his song "Behind My Camel" in 1980. In 2007, the French Government appointed Summers a Chevalier of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. In 2008, he was awarded an honorary doctorate by Bournemouth University.

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Today's Anniversary - 23rd November

Births

• 1945 - Dennis Nilsen
• 1949 - Tom Joyner
• 1883 - Jose C. Orozco
• 1955 - Steven Brust
• 1920 - Paul Celan

Deaths

• 1995 - Louis Malle
• 1979 - Merle Oberon
• 1991 - Klaus Kinski
• 2001 - Mary Whitehouse
• 1821 - Sir James Mansfield