Top 23 Quotes & Sayings by Jack Bruce

I had a lot of vocal problems when I was younger. I don't know if it's down to leading a healthier lifestyle or what but my range has increased.

I was 16 when I got a scholarship to study classical composition at a conservatory. By that time I had already listened to Scottish folksong with my mother, sung in church choirs, and had sung solo with Benjamin Britten conducting.

I've always been interested in any kind of great music, and African music is, I think, the source of it all.

Thankfully I'm not endlessly ambitious, but I have done some crazy ambitious things like buying an island off the west coast of Scotland in the late Sixties.

I know he played on the last record but I don't wake up in the middle of the night thinking of Eric Clapton.

We all have roles in life. I'm a dad, a husband, this and that, but basically I only feel justified in being alive when I'm on the stage.

I think I'm an okay parent, but I'd put myself in the category of a musician-who-happened-to-become-a-father. I'm definitely not a father-who-happened-to-be-a-musician.

Growing up in inner-city Glasgow, it sometimes seemed to me money hadn't been invented.

Between now and then and I just felt it was ready and it was a long enough period gone by. I obviously didn't want to hurt anybody, you know. It was done out of a genuine memorial or tribute whatever you want to call it.

Some musicians I know are incredible fathers. Like Keith Richards. A fantastic dad.

At the age of 16 I started performing with a dance band in the evenings and began earning more money than my father, but he was pleased for me.

Well I like everything but my first love has always been piano because when I started out there was a piano in my house and it was there so I just started tinkling on it really so it's always been my first love.

What I'm trying to do, in my own small way, is trying to bring African and Afro-Cuban rhythms into rock.

Well all the big companies are really panicked by the internet thing and all that, and sales went down, although sales have gone up again in this country a bit and also the big companies, because they're so big, they need big sales really so they're not really interested.

I've always had money because of my early success with Cream, so I tell young musicians to aim to write their own material, because owning the composition rights makes a very big difference.

Since I got my new liver, some of my tastes have changed. There are certain things I don't like anymore. I loved Indian food before but not now.

I played upright bass. I wanted to write great tunes, play the bass, be a band leader, and smoke a big funny pipe like Charlie Mingus. So I went out and bought the pipe when I was around 18 or 19 years old. You know even women smoke a pipe in Glasgow. I worked with Carla Bley and she smoked a pipe, which I find fascinating.

Bach is really the ultimate in bass players you know

If you haven't got a sense of humor you're making your life a hundred times harder. It doesn't matter what happens to you, if you can have a laugh about it, and don't take yourself so serious, you have the battles halfway won.

I listen to a lot of different kinds of music and rather than just doing one thing when I make an album, the challenge to myself is to write all these diverse tracks, but to make them work. It's like a jigsaw because if you've got a lyrical track going into a hard rock track... it's got to work. You've got to write things that will work together.

I was a big fan of Gary Moore, he was my buddy and I miss him a lot. I loved his playing because you've got that passion; it was sort of a Celtic thing. The Irish and Scots they just go for it and not too worried about looking good. When I was in the states touring, I landed in Seattle to do a gig and one of the fans came to me and told me about Gary's death. It was very hard for me to carry on, it was awful.

I'm no politician but I do feel that a lot of damage was done because of misguided principals and America is still suffering from it.

I think people who basically do one thing like Eric Clapton is great. But I've always enjoyed playing different kinds of music and playing with different kinds of musicians because I find that really interesting, like learning and working with Kip Hanrahan. There's a great conga player called Milton Cardona and he taught me a lot of the nuances, he's a Santeria Priest and so he knows his onions as it were.