Top 40 Andy Summers Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “Im 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

2. “I like to play with someone who can cover a lot of ground and someone with whom you can discuss the language at a reasonable level; otherwise it gets a bit frustrating.”

— Andy Summers

3. “I don’t like playing standards. I like to do my own cutting edge work.”

— Andy Summers

4. “The thing about photography is, some people surround themselves with extremely strong subject matter. And unless you’re a moron, you’re going to get a really strong photograph.”

— Andy Summers

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

— Andy Summers

6. “I admire photographers who can take much more ordinarily subject matter and make it transcend that ordinariness, so that it becomes something else fresh and new. It opens this doorway. I really admire people who can do that with photography.”

— Andy Summers

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

— Andy Summers

8. “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

9. “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

10. “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

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

— Andy Summers

12. “You don’t want to be so far off the planet that you come out with something that doesn’t make sense to anybody.”

— Andy Summers

13. “To go see a band in a big venue is a difficult experience. I don’t really like that too much. I’m not a guy who puts on iTunes and goes, “Oh, what’s hot!” I don’t need to.”

— Andy Summers

14. “I spend a lot of time working as a painter and in my studio I go from upstairs where I paint to downstairs where I play and record, so I get this thing crossing over.”

— Andy Summers

15. “Start with the titles, and then build the music that goes with them.”

— Andy Summers

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

— Andy Summers

17. “What you aim for, in the first place, is to be as good as you can possibly be. This is what I do, and I’m going to try to be the best in the world.”

— Andy Summers

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

— Andy Summers

19. “Actually, I think my hands are in the best shape they’ve ever been in terms of what I can do.”

— Andy Summers

20. “Ive also just come off a year and a half playing acoustic shows which is fantastic for the hands, and changes your head a little bit.”

— Andy Summers

21. “I don’t go out much to see bands. I prefer to be on stage.”

— Andy Summers

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

— Andy Summers

23. “My favorite sounds are the high, spacey ones that are very ambient.”

— Andy Summers

24. “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

25. “Aping what you’ve already done is just so dangerous and unrewarding.”

— Andy Summers

26. “I think rock records tend to be very expensive.”

— Andy Summers

27. “Usually, the best thing is when the band goes to the bar and gets the corner table, we sit there like kings, and then they bring people to us. It’s just rock ‘n’ roll. It’s stupid, really.”

— Andy Summers

28. “I am pretty embroiled in moving on and moving forward with music.”

— Andy Summers

29. “I don’t have a great nostalgia for the past.”

— Andy Summers

30. “It’s hard to avoid the past but one goes forward.”

— Andy Summers

31. “You’re on the stage and you’ve got all those people yelling at you, so you better be right in the moment, reacting to that. It’s completely live and organic. Even 20 years later, it’s the same thing. You may be even better on your instrument. Hopefully, you are.”

— Andy Summers

32. “I would like to play with electronic keyboards again.”

— Andy Summers

33. “If you’re 20 years old, you’ve grown up without buying albums.”

— Andy Summers

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

— Andy Summers

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

— Andy Summers

36. “For me, a great show is when there’s a great rapport with the band and the audience, and we’re all really into it. The first trick is to bring the audience into the band, break the ice, have a life, and be one, so you can enjoy the next hour and a half together.”

— Andy Summers

37. “For me, the guitar synthesizer is a great writing instrument.”

— Andy Summers

38. “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

39. “I was totally into jazz in my teens.”

— Andy Summers

40. “I actually think I play better now than Ive ever played.”

— Andy Summers

41. “Sometimes, literally within a few minutes, you’d be off this amazing roaring scene and back at your hotel room, staring at the patten of the wallpaper. It’s very surreal. You’re back in your room, and it’s dead quiet and really weird.”

— Andy Summers