I wanted to be able to play guitar. I wanted to be able to make music hurt.
About Alexis Korner
Alexis Andrew Nicholas Koerner (19 April 1928 – 1 January 1984), known professionally as Alexis Korner, was a British blues musician and radio broadcaster, who has sometimes been referred to as “a founding father of British blues”. A major influence on the sound of the British music scene in the 1960s, he was instrumental in the formation of several notable British bands including The Rolling Stones and Free.
More quotes from Alexis Korner
Once you became associated with a children’s show, you’re finished.
British blues musician and radio broadcaster
Every musical movement that is big enough has to produce some good musicians who wouldn’t have had the incentive to start playing without it.
British blues musician and radio broadcaster
I guess music, particularly the blues, is the only form of schizophrenia that has organised itself into being both legal and beneficial to society.
British blues musician and radio broadcaster
In those days, between the ages of 12 and 18 you meant nothing. You were the extra place at the side table if someone came to dinner. You were of no interest to anyone.
British blues musician and radio broadcaster
The parallel development in American blues to the British movement has resulted in Johnny Winters.
British blues musician and radio broadcaster
In 1940 I came across a record by Jimmy Yancey. I can’t say how important that record is. From then on, all I wanted to do was play the blues.
British blues musician and radio broadcaster
Blues and jazz pulled me away from what was left of my family.
British blues musician and radio broadcaster
I wanted to be able to play guitar. I wanted to be able to make music hurt.
British blues musician and radio broadcaster
Since the age of 12, all my musical thinking has been influenced by Afro-American music.
British blues musician and radio broadcaster
I must have been heavily schizophrenic all my life. The me who hears what the other me can’t play is the dominant one.
British blues musician and radio broadcaster
The British feel of blues has been hard, rather than emotional. Far too much emphasis on 12 bar, too little attention to words, far too little originality.
British blues musician and radio broadcaster
I had always intended to make a living out of playing blues. But I never admitted it to myself. I don’t suppose I could have given a logical reason for it ever becoming possible to do so.
British blues musician and radio broadcaster
If the same phrase in the same place created the right effect, I was perfectly prepared to use it every time. I wasn’t worried that I wasn’t improvising.
British blues musician and radio broadcaster
I can’t explain why one wants to pass a particular sort of pain onto other people, but you do.
British blues musician and radio broadcaster
I’m a compulsive musician, but it’s also a bloody good way out of having to do anything else.
British blues musician and radio broadcaster
When I reflect on how things have changed, I can’t help but laugh.
British blues musician and radio broadcaster
I was considered as a jazz man rather than as a blues player. There were no blues players-you played one sort of jazz of another sort of jazz.
British blues musician and radio broadcaster