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" We played for peanuts. But we did what we wanted to do, we heard what we wanted to hear, we performed what we wanted to perform, we learned what we wanted to learn. "
Steve Lacy
Did
Learned
Wanted
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" There is an awful lot of what I call recreational jazz going on, where people go out and learn a particular language or style and become real sharks on somebody else's language. "
Steve Lacy
Sharks
Language
Jazz
" To me, there is spirit in a reed. It's a living thing, a weed, really, and it does contain spirit of a sort. It's really an ancient vibration. "
Steve Lacy
Me
Reed
Spirit
" I still love the whole history of jazz. The old things sound better than ever. "
Steve Lacy
History
Love
Jazz
" Risk is at the heart of jazz. Every note we play is a risk. "
Steve Lacy
Risk
Play
Note
" Kenny G, I have to be grateful to him for proving that the instrument can be played all different kinds of ways. "
Steve Lacy
Different
Him
Be Grateful
" I think it is in collaboration that the nature of art is revealed. "
Steve Lacy
Art
Think
Collaboration
" Whoever has an original thing to say, it is sort of a threat to the status quo. "
Steve Lacy
Sort
Original
Status
" When I first started playing music in 1955, there was just a small body of people that knew it. It was a very esoteric type of thing. "
Steve Lacy
People
Body
Music
" You must have the music to justify an instrument's extensive use. "
Steve Lacy
You
Must
Music
" Before the work comes to you, you have to invent work. "
Steve Lacy
You
Work
Invent
" The soprano turned out to sound to me like the right hand on the piano. "
Steve Lacy
Sound
Right
Piano
" Jazz is like wine. When it is new, it is only for the experts, but when it gets older, everybody wants it. "
Steve Lacy
Only
Jazz
Older
" The more original something is, the more of a threat it seems until the people catch up with it. That happened with Thelonious Monk. It happened with anybody who is really original. "
Steve Lacy
People
Monk
Original
" What I learned with Cecil Taylor was strategy and survival and how to resist temptations and resist getting discouraged. "
Steve Lacy
Discouraged
Strategy
Survival
" Saxophone is one thing, and music is another. "
Steve Lacy
Music
One Thing
Another
" Bamboo is not a weed, it's a flowering plant. Bamboo is a magnificent plant. "
Steve Lacy
Bamboo
Weed
Magnificent
" I've always been extremely lucky in playing with great people who knew much more than I did. That's how I got from there to here. "
Steve Lacy
Here
Great
Lucky
" You can work on the saxophone alone, but ultimately you must perform with others. "
Steve Lacy
Work
You
Saxophone
" I started in New Orleans music and played all through the history of jazz. "
Steve Lacy
New
New Orleans
Music
" If you have music you want to play that no one asks you to play, you have to go out and find where you can play it. It's called do or die. "
Steve Lacy
Play
Want
You
" Register is very important. Music sounds best in a certain register. "
Steve Lacy
Sounds
Music
Important
" The potential for the saxophone is unlimited. "
Steve Lacy
Saxophone
Unlimited
Potential
" If you listen to Louis Armstrong from 1929, you will never hear anything better than that really, and you will never hear anything more free than that. "
Steve Lacy
Free
Better
You
" You have to sound sad first of all, then maybe later you can sound good. "
Steve Lacy
Sad
Good
First
" I heard Sidney Bechet play a Duke Ellington piece and fell in love with the soprano saxophone. "
Steve Lacy
Saxophone
Play
Love
" I fell in love with jazz when I was 12 years old from listening to Duke Ellington and hearing a lot of jazz in New York on the radio. "
Steve Lacy
New
Love
Jazz
" Some people really want to play Mozart and be just performers. I was more interested in invention. "
Steve Lacy
Want
Some People
People
" If you're trying to invent something new, you're going to reach a lot of discouraging points, and most people give up. "
Steve Lacy
Going
New
People
" Nobody was playing the soprano saxophone and certainly nobody was trying to do anything with it. So I was all alone. I didn't know that at first. "
Steve Lacy
Know
Alone
Saxophone
" People don't want to suffer. They want to sound good immediately, and this is one of the biggest problems in the world. "
Steve Lacy
Good
World
Want