Bamboo is not a weed, it's a flowering plant. Bamboo is a magnificent plant.
~Steve Lacy

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Before the work comes to you, you have to invent work.
~Steve Lacy

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Circumstances can be very important. Find the right people to work with.
~Steve Lacy

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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

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I heard Sidney Bechet play a Duke Ellington piece and fell in love with the soprano saxophone.
~Steve Lacy

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I started in New Orleans music and played all through the history of jazz.
~Steve Lacy

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I still love the whole history of jazz. The old things sound better than ever.
~Steve Lacy

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I wanted to be a pianist but it just wasn't my thing. I guess I wanted to stand up rather than sit down.
~Steve Lacy

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I was spoiled by Monk's music because it was so good, so complete.
~Steve Lacy

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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

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I've been working on the soprano saxophone for 40 years, and the possibilities are astounding. It's up to you, the only limit is the imagination.
~Steve Lacy

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I've performed solo for 20 years now, but I don't do much of it, because if you only play alone, you go crazy and out of tune and play foolish music.
~Steve Lacy

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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

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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

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It starts with a single sound. If there's something in that sound, then it's worth continuing.
~Steve Lacy

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Jazz is like wine. When it is new, it is only for the experts, but when it gets older, everybody wants it.
~Steve Lacy

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Jazz is people's music, a collectivity.
~Steve Lacy

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Kenny G, I have to be grateful to him for proving that the instrument can be played all different kinds of ways.
~Steve Lacy

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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

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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

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Saxophone is one thing, and music is another.
~Steve Lacy

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Some people really want to play Mozart and be just performers. I was more interested in invention.
~Steve Lacy

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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

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The potential for the saxophone is unlimited.
~Steve Lacy

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The saxophone is a very interesting machine, but I'm more interested in music.
~Steve Lacy

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The soprano has all those other instruments in it. It's got the soprano song voice, flute, violin, clarinet, and tenor elements and can even approach the baritone in intensity.
~Steve Lacy

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They call me before they go into production, when they have a prototype, and they call legitimate saxophonists, too. As opposed to the other kind.
~Steve Lacy

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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

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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

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When I came up, it was all about originality and collective research. There is an awful lot of imitation going on now.
~Steve Lacy

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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

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When I found the music of Monk I finally found music that fit that horn. Every one of his tunes fit it perfectly.
~Steve Lacy

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Whoever has an original thing to say, it is sort of a threat to the status quo.
~Steve Lacy

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You have to sound sad first of all, then maybe later you can sound good.
~Steve Lacy

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You must have the music to justify an instrument's extensive use.
~Steve Lacy

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