Sometimes you have to play a long time to be able to play like yourself.
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.
Do not fear mistakes. There are none.
I'll play it first and tell you what it is later.
I know what I've done for music, but don't call me a legend. Just call me Miles Davis.
Prince got some Marvin Gaye and Jimi Hendrix and Sly in him, also, even Little Richard. He's a mixture of all those guys and Duke Ellington.
Space music'd be really something... but they don't have no gravity up there. You couldn't have no downbeat!
If you understood everything I say, you'd be me!
It's always been a gift with me, hearing music the way I do. I don't know where it comes from, it's just there and I don't question it.
Prince is from the school of James Brown, and I love James Brown because of all the great rhythms he plays.
When I'm playing, I'm never through. It's unfinished. I like to find a place to leave for someone else to finish it. That's where the high comes in.
I have to change. It's like a curse.
It was Jimi Hendrix that I first got into when Betty Mabry turned me on to him.
When you do anything too long, you either wear it out or lose interest.
He comes in on the beat and plays on top of the beat. I think when Prince makes love, he hears drums instead of Ravel.
The thing to judge in any jazz artist is, does the man project and does he have ideas.
You'd be surprised. Drummers ape each other. The way every rock n' roll record sounds like something else but not all together. Everything other drummers play, if you're playing drums, they all hear.
The music I was really listening to in 1968 was James Brown, the great guitar player Jimi Hendrix, and a new group... Sly and the Family Stone, led by Sly Stewart from San Francisco.
Prince might be bringing that low sound back, because he has that double bass.
Jimi Hendrix came from the blues, like me. We understood each other right away because of that. He was a great blues guitarist.
