Best quotes by Miles Davis

I couldn't do "What's Love Got To Do With It", Tina Turner because it wasn't the right tempo; so I scratched it from the record. I wanted to do it about a year ago, but something happened.

I keep telling Ron Lorman and them in the control room, "It's my band! The reason I have a band is because I can't stand for somebody to tell me what to do."

I really liked Wynton when I first met him. He's still a nice young man, only confused.

Birth of the Cool' became a collector's item, I think, out of a reaction to Bird and Dizzy's music. Bird and Diz played this hip, real fast thing, and if you weren't a fast listener, you couldn't catch the humor or the feeling in their music. Their musical sound wasn't sweet, and it didn't have harmonic lines that you could easily hum out on the street with your girlfriend trying to get over with a kiss.

As long as I've been playing, they never say I done anything. They always say that some white guy did it.

I began to realize that some of the things Ornette Coleman had said about things being played three or fours ways, independently of each other, were true because Bach had also composed that way.

Some of [drummers] drop time because they want to hear what you're doin'.

The reason [drummers] call things "unison", and they sound unison, is because you actually play two different tempos . . . like you're a little sharp, or a little flat; it's so slight that they call it "unison", but it's not unison.

I can tell. I'm gifted with that, you know. When I hear that the tempo is slightly off, it's hard for me.

It's a different ballgame now, so that lets [teo] Macero out. He's always complainin', always sick.

Like Ron Lorman's always sayin', "Na-na-na-na-na," you know what I mean? I don't need that in the studio.

Maybe you play a melody twice. You play it once like you like it, and some parts that you don't like you can just switch. An eight-bar motive - you can just take it and put it in the front or back or something like that. It can save you 50 or 60 or 70,000 dollars, a drum machine. That's why everybody uses it.

Somebody, my daughter or my wife, gave me a music box for Christmas. It plays "My Funny Valentine" on celeste, you know? So I had Bobby [Irving] just play "Jean Pierre" with the changes on celeste.

Catch Harry Belafonte. He's got a helluva rhythm section.And so have the Pointer Sisters. And that little guy with Sammy Clayton. He plays the whole show with 40 members.

The melody is French. But that's the end of the record. I named it "Jean Pierre Then There Were None," you know, because of the big explosion. You'll like it. It's a nice album.

I've gotten hernias from drummers when they drop tempo.

I put all those synthesizer sounds behind "Decoy" and "Code M.D." A lot of things we write together. A lot of things are his, but they don't have that thing I want on the bottom. I often tell him, I say, "Bobby [Irving], if there's a melody, there's another one somewhere that goes with it."

If I have a dynamite bass player - I have Darryl Jones - it's so easy to write for him because he's such a funky kid and he's gifted. He's like a little genius.

Anybody can play. The note is only 20 percent. The attitude of the motherfucker who plays it is 80 percent.

It's not the note you play that's the wrong note - it's the note you play afterwards that makes it right or wrong.

A painting is music you can see and music is a painting you can hear.

In music, silence is more important than sound.

It takes a long time to sound like yourself.

It's not about standing still and becoming safe. If anybody wants to keep creating they have to be about change.

If somebody told me I only had an hour to live, I'd spend it choking a white man. I'd do it nice and slow.

First you imitate, then you innovate.

Always listen for what you can leave out.

Knowledge is freedom and ignorance is slavery

Don't worry about playing a lot of notes. Just find one pretty one.

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.

If you hit a wrong note, it's the next note that you play that determines if it's good or bad.

Don't play what's there, play what's not there.

See, if you put a musician in a place where he has to do something different from what he does all the time, then he can do that - but he's got to think differently in order to do it. He's got to play above what he knows - far above it. 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.

Music is the framework around the silence.

Do not fear mistakes. There are none.

My future starts when I wake up every morning.

If you sacrifice your art because of some woman, or some man, or for some color, or for some wealth, you can't be trusted.

It's not the notes you play, it's the notes you don't play.

You have to know 400 notes that you can play, then pick the right four.

When kids don't learn about their own heritage in school, they just don't care about school... But you won't see it in the history books unless we get the power to write our own history and tell our story ourselves.

If you're not nervous then you're not paying attention.

In improvisation, there are no mistakes.

To keep creating you have to be about change.

People will go for anything they don't understand if it's got enough hype.

Jazz is the big brother of Revolution. Revolution follows it around.

We don't play to be seen. I'm addicted to music, not audiences.

Americans don't like any form of art, man. All they like to do is make money. They don't like me, Sammy Davis, or anybody else. They don't like nothing. They just like Sammy because he can make 'em a lot of money.

Sometimes you have to play a long time to be able to play like yourself.

In other words, an instrument should be an extension of you; it's supposed to sound like you - the way you walk, the way you dress, you know.

At least one day out of the year all musicans should just put their instruments down, and give thanks to Duke Ellington.

It took me twenty years study and practice to work up to what I wanted to play in this performance. How can she expect to listen five minutes and understand it?

Some day I'm gonna call me up on the phone, so when I answer, I can tell myself to shut up.

I don't hold it against Dizzy [Gillespie], you know, but if a guy wants to play a certain way, you work towards that. If he stops - he's full of crap, you know. I mean, I wouldn't do it, for no money, or for no place in the white man's world. Not just to make money, because then you don't have anything. You don't have as much money as whoever you're trying to ape; that's making money by being commercial. Then you don't have anything to give the world; so you're not important. You might as well be dead.

Always look ahead, but never look back.

Good music is good no matter what kind of music it is.

I'll play it first and figure out what it's called later.

My ego only needs a good rhythm section

My father's rich, my momma's good looking. Right? And I can play the Blues. I've never suffered and don't intend to suffer.

I can tell whether a person can play just by the way he stands.

It's like, how did Columbus discover America when the Indians were already here? What kind of s-- is that, but white people's s--?

If you understood everything I say, you'd be me!

Jazz is like blues with a shot of heroin!

You know why I quit playing ballads? Cause I love playing ballads.

The way you change and help music is by tryin' to invent new ways to play

I always listen to what I can leave out.

You should never be comfortable, man. Being comfortable fouled up a lot of musicians.

If you have to ask, you'll never know.

Don't be afraid of mistakes - There are none.

You have to practice for a long time before you can learn to sound like yourself

...people will go for anything they don't understand if it's got enough hype. They want to be hip, want always to be in on the new thing so they don't look unhip. White people are especially like that, particularly when a black person is doing something they don't understand...That's what I thought was happening when Ornette hit town.

There are no wrong notes in jazz: only notes in the wrong places.

I think every Negro over fifty should get a medal for putting up with all that crap.

I know what I've done for music, but don't call me a legend. Just call me Miles Davis.

In high school I was best in music class on the trumpet, but the prizes went to the boys with blue eyes. I made up my mind to outdo anybody white on my horn.

I don't pay no attention to what critics say about me, the good or the bad. The toughest critic I got is myself...and I'm too vain to play anything I think is bad.