I. Frost's Selected Quotations

Everything at Amazon by and about: Miles Davis

The greatest feeling I ever had - with my clothes on - was when I first heard Diz and Bird together in St. Louis, Missouri, back in 1944. Miles Davis I've always told the musicians in my band to play what they know and then play above that. Because then anything can happen, and that's where great art and music happens." Miles Davis "That was my gift - having the ability to put certain guys together that would create a chemistry and then letting them go; letting them play what they knew, and above it." Miles Davis "There were some live recordings that I guess Columbia will release when they think they can make the most money - probably after I'm dead." Miles Davis "I was starting to go now to these after-hours joints where everyone was coked out of their minds, and she really hated all that. I would be gone for a couple of days and wouldn't even call home. Then, when I did come home, I'd be so worn out that I'd fall asleep while I was eating my food." Miles Davis "The music we did together changed every fucking night; if you heard it yesterday, it was different tonight. Even we didn't know where it was all going to. But we did know it was going somewhere else and that it was probably going to be hip, and that was enough to keep everyone excited while it lasted," Miles Davis I'm always thinking about creating. My future starts when I wake up every morning. Every day I find something creative to do with my life." Miles Davis "Bebop was about change, about evolution. It wasn't about standing still and becoming safe. If anybody wants to keep creating they have to be about change." Miles Davis A legend is an old man with a cane known for what he used to do. I'm still doing it." Miles Davis "I have always believed not playing with each other for a while is good for a band if they are good musicians and like playing with each other. It just makes the music fresher and that's what happened at the Plugged Nickel." Miles Davis "I don't like to hear someone put down dixieland. Those people who say there's no music but bop are just stupid; it shows how much they don't know." Miles Davis I've practiced on my tone for almost 50 years, and if I can't hear my tone, I can't play. If I can't play, then I won't get paid. If I don't get paid, then I lose the house, you know? Miles Davis It's like a chain reaction. If I lose my tone, I can't fuck, can't make love, can't do nothin'. I'll just walk into the ocean and die, if I lose my tone. Miles Davis "You can't play anything on a horn that Louis hasn't played" Miles Davis I've come close to matching the feeling of that night in 1944 in music, when I first heard Diz and Bird, but I've never got there.... I'm always looking for it, listening and feeling for it, though, trying to always feel it in and through the music I play every day. Miles Davis "Monk taught me more about music composition than anyone else on 52nd Street." Miles Davis "Sometimes you have to play for a long time to be able to play like yourself." Miles Davis It's always been a gift with me, hearing music the way I do. I don't know where it comes from, it's just there and I don't question it. Miles Davis Do not fear mistakes. There are none. Miles Davis For me, music and life are all about style. Miles Davis "I wanted to play high and fast like Dizzy just to prove to myself that I could do it. A lot of cats used to be putting me down back in the bebop days because their ears could only pick up what Dizzy was doing. That's what they thought playing the trumpet was all about. And when somebody like me came along, trying something different, he ran the risk of being put down." Miles Davis " You could be a great musician, an innovative and importabt artist, but nobody cared if you didn't make the white people who were in control some money. The real money was in getting to the mainstream of America, and Columbia Records served the mainstream of this country. Prestige didn't; it was making great records, but outside the mainstream." Miles Davis "I'm trying to keep my artistic juices flowing. I would like to write a play someday, maybe a musical. I have even been experimenting with some rap songs, because I think there's some heavy rhythms up in that music. I heard that Max Roach said that he thought that the next Charlie Parker might come from out of rap melodies and rhythms. Sometimes you can't get those rhythms out of your head." Miles Davis "I learn things from Prince and Cameo. " Miles Davis I learned when I was fifteen that a show, a live show, has to have an opening, a middle, and an ending. If you know that, your shows will sound like the highlights of an average show all the way through." Miles Davis "The world has always been about change. People who don't change will find themselves like folk musicians, playing in museums and local as a motherfucker. Miles Davis Because the music and the sound has gone international and there ain't no sense in trying to go back into some womb where you once were. A man can't go back into his mother's womb." Miles Davis "I also did a Honda commercial, and that one commercial got me more recognition than anything else I have ever done. Miles Davis "I'll play it first and tell you what it is later." Miles Davis Don't play what's there, play what's not there. Miles Davis All you've got to do in this country today is just be on television and you're more known and respected than anyone who paints a great painting or creates great music or writes a great book or is a great dancer. People were already calling me 'Mr. Tyson,' or saying, 'I know who you are. You're that guy who's married to Cicely Tyson!' And they would be sincere when they said that. It taught me that a bad, untalented person who is on television or in the movies can be more recognized and respected than than a genius who doesn't appear on the screen." Miles Davis "You can't play nothing on modern trumpet that doesn't come from him (Louis Armstrong), not even modern shit. I can't even remember a time when he sounded bad playing the trumpet. Never. Not even one time. Miles Davis "As long as I've been playing, they never say I done anything. They always say that some white guy did it." Miles Davis "Monk was a gentle person, gentle and beautiful, but he was strong as an ox. And if I had ever said something about punching Monk out in front of his face - and I never did - then somebody should have just come and got me and taken me to the madhouse, because Monk could have just picked my little ass up and thrown me through a wall." Miles Davis "We're not going to play the blues anymore. Let the white folks play the blues. They got 'em, so they can keep 'em." Miles Davis "I don't care if a dude is purple with green breath as long as he can swing." Miles Davis " You get the right guys to play the right things at the right time and you get a motherfucker. . ." Miles Davis "The way I had been playing before these guys came into the band was kind of getting on my nerves. Like a favourite pair of shoes that you wear all the time. After a while you've got to change them." Miles Davis "Creativity and genius don't know nothing about age; either you got it or you don't, and being old is not going to help you get it. I understood that we had to do something different. I knew that I was playing with some great young musicians that had their fingers on a different pulse." Miles Davis