A Quote by Donald Fagen

My style is a little quirky. I can't play as fast as most professional jazz players. — © Donald Fagen
My style is a little quirky. I can't play as fast as most professional jazz players.
I play a lot quicker, in quite an attacking style, play a few little crazy shots sometimes that other players wouldn't take.
Oh, I was a real Nirvana kid. I got into jazz because I listened to a lot of metal, Megadeth and that, and those guys play really fast and are virtuosos. I wanted to learn more about it, and I discovered that a lot of jazz guys played really fast, too.
I can only be me. I do what I do, I'm not a jazz player. ... I don't play jazz standards, at least not in any recognizable way. It's not my turf but I have plenty of respect for that style of playing.
If I have to be considered any type of jazz artist, it would be New Orleans jazz because New Orleans jazz never forgot that jazz is dance music and jazz is fun. I'm more influenced by that style of jazz than anything else.
It's a different style the way the German players play. I think the English players like to play a lot of one and two touch and we can find each other in the pockets.
I can't figure out how you can draft players for a coach that you know coaches a certain a style, and was successful doing that style, and get him to play a style that you feel comfortable with.
People are always defining and re-defining music. My style of playing has been characterized as smooth jazz and acid jazz. I listen as I play; I'm not caught up in defining the type of music I play.
I also love doing comedy. I just moved to L.A. last July. Before that, Vancouver is all about sci-fi, so I didn't get any comedy, whatsoever. But in L.A., people are like, "You don't look quirky enough," and I'm like, "I'm quirky. I'm the definition of quirky. How do you want me to look quirky." They have these little boxes that they put everyone in, so now I have to try to break the mold and get them to see me as being quirky.
I started playing violin because I was fascinated by how violin players could play so fast. I would buy their cassettes, and learn different concertos, but then I started rounding out my collection. My dad was a big jazz fan, so I just started hearing a lot more soul music. I loved Little Stevie Wonder, and I got really into him as a singer and a writer as I got older.
Milton, of all people, gave the most perfect definition of the state of mind required to play jazz: ' with wanton heed and giddy cunning.' That's how you play jazz.
When I was a little kid wanting to play music, it was because of people like Pete Johnson, Huey Smith, Allen Toussaint, Professor Longhair, James Booker, Art Neville ... there was so many piano players I loved in New Orleans. Then there was guys from out of town that would come cut there a lot. There was so many great bebop piano players, so many great jazz piano players, so many great Latin piano players, so many great blues piano players. Some of those Afro-Cuban bands had some killer piano players. There was so many different things going on musically, and it was all of interest to me.
I still play my fast-paced style but when the game slows down it allows you to see the little things - the right passes, where to lay the ball up.
My style of play has always been 'Guardiola style,' so I've not had too many problems. At the same time, he helps you to evolve and to change little things, because it's obviously not exactly the same style of play as at Bilbao.
People ask me to describe how I play, and the most obvious answer is that I'm a jazz influenced guitar player. But I'm not a jazz guitar player. Wes Montgomery was a jazz guitarist, Joe Pass was a jazz guitarist (laughs).
Jazz is an endless source of ideas, because you can use anything. You can play operatic arias. You can incorporate them into jazz. You can play gypsy music and incorporate it into jazz. You can European classical and you can incorporate it into jazz. You can use anything and jazz it up, as they used to say.
We're [with Robbie Robertson ] jazz musicians. The context may be rock 'n' roll but it's still jazz. It's jazz and that means improvization...you play a tune the way it feels and you play it differently every time. It can never be the same.
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