Andy Summers

“I was totally into jazz in my teens.”

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

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

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

“I actually think I play better now than I've ever played.”

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

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

“It accumulates over the years and I've led so many bands of my own now and forced myself into new situations... You would hope that you play better and better - until you just get too feeble to do it anymore.”

“I'm just trying to avoid any sort of generic kind of music - I don't want to do generic jazz or fusion.”

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

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

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

“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.”

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

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

“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.”

“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.”

“If the guitar synthesizer is really going to stand as a synthesizer on its own, it needs to develop a more characteristic sound; I don' think it's gotten there yet.”

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

“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.”