Talk:Bill Connors

	Biography portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Biography, a collaborative effort to create, develop and organize Wikipedia's articles about people. All interested editors are invited to join the project and contribute to the discussion. For instructions on how to use this banner, please refer to the documentation.BiographyWikipedia:WikiProject BiographyTemplate:WikiProject Biographybiography
Start	This article has been rated as Start-class on Wikipedia's content assessment scale.
	This article is supported by WikiProject Musicians.

Guitarists Start‑class

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject Guitarists, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Guitarists on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.GuitaristsWikipedia:WikiProject GuitaristsTemplate:WikiProject Guitaristsguitarist
Start	This article has been rated as Start-class on Wikipedia's content assessment scale.

Jazz Unassessed

	Jazz portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Jazz, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of jazz on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.JazzWikipedia:WikiProject JazzTemplate:WikiProject JazzJazz
???	This article has not yet received a rating on Wikipedia's content assessment scale.
???	This article has not yet received a rating on the project's importance scale.

Bill Connors speaks, others speak on bill

"It's hard to overlook the early Return to Forever or the Stanley Clarke debut solo recording, but.. again sentiment has taken over...but here is truly the FIRST guitarist to play fusion with a KILLER 'rock' guitar sound". - Steve Kahn

"The reason I use a Les Paul is because it has a function. It doesn't have a traditional sound, but it's rapidly becoming a tradition."

"I'd been playing for about four years and suddenly had an overnight change. I didn't want to be a blues guitarist anymore. I began listening to people like Bill Evans, Jim Hall, Wes Montgomery, [bassist] Scott LaFaro, Miles Davis, John Coltrane -- anyone who had a 'jazz' label. Django Reinhardt really got to me. The first time I heard one of his records, I thought that was just what I wanted to be. He had all the fire, creativity, and energy that rock players have today. And the amazing purity of his melodies -- you just knew they came from a totally instinctive place."

"Chick was my hero. I wanted to be Chick Corea on guitar. I didn't know him, but whenever I really wanted to get off on music I'd play some of his piano solos and Return To Forever songs. I heard that Chick was looking for a guitarist. Steve encouraged me to call Chick, and though I was very nervous, I did, and he invited me to come over to the club where he was working and sit in. I was so scared that I almost turned him down. But after running around and saying to everyone, 'Guess who I'm going to play with tonight,' and everyone telling everyone else, all this energy was formulating -- and I took to my room and practiced my ass off."

"SOMETIMES I FEEL like I deserted my own boat," Bill Connors explains, surrounded by guitars in his loft in New York's Chelsea district. "When I got out of Return To Forever in 1974, I threw the concept of fusion out for myself -- I figured by '76 or '77 it'd be totally dead. But then all these guitarists came up sounding like me, doing things that I was trying to do. In the last two years, I've decided that there was something about what we were trying to do that I want to do again, that I *feel* again. Bad timing, huh?"

"I had my Wes Montgomery period where I played with my thumb and I put flat wounds on my Les Paul. [Laughs] I had Wes on my brain, you know. I had to go through all these things, and usually someone would tell me, "Hey, stop doing that."

I removed the above quotes and placed them on the discussion page here. --Rajah 22:01, 2 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]