17 Quotes by Dave Holland

There's really a connection between the boxing and his way of playing ... It's the speed, the in and outs, the reaction times, the feinting, the moves, the combinations ... It went right along with his thing -- timing, nuance.

I started playing with a group of young people when I was 13. I turned professional when I was 15 and I played dance halls, this on bass guitar.

The whole point in developing your own style is to find your own voice.

It was only when I started to dig my heels in that I started to realize that's what I needed to do - that nobody was going to open the door for me, that I had to make some space.

I want to be surprised by what people do, I don't want to work with people who need to be told what to do. I want people to show me what they've got.

In fact, jazz has such a great feeling and great emotional content that it really doesn't require you to have technical understanding of it. I think you just have to allow your feelings to go with the music and you will find yourself carried along by it fairly quickly.

The fundamental role that the bass has always had is to outline the lower parts of the harmony and be supportive rhythmically. You work very closely with the drummer, usually in a jazz group and in the rhythm section. It is sort of a fulcrum in the group.

All of the musicians when I was young used to always say you had to tell a story when you're a musician.