133 Quotes by John Densmore

A major component of jazz is improvisation, which forces you to stay in the moment because you never know what will be coming up. There's a lot of freedom and space available as you improvise around the chord changes.

I had the first XJ6 and then they became real popular with lawyers so I had to move on. The only problem with Jaguar is that you have to go to the gas station every couple blocks, and a mechanic once told me that if you don't have the right attitude when you walk up to a Jag, it won't start.

Bass players and drummers are like brothers, working in the basement, cooking up the groove. If they don't lock together with the feel, the ensemble will suck.

Anyone can play Doors songs, unless it's for an ad for some product.

I had no clue of Hollywood until I became a teenager. Then I got a fake ID in Tijuana and discovered Shelly's Manne-Hole, on Cahuenga and Selma, where I saw John Coltrane and his piano player, McCoy Tyner, and Elvin Jones, the drummer - my idol.

I used to say, if Jim were alive today he'd never be clean and sober but I'm changing that answer because Eminem - angry, creative, just like Jim; a real talent - and Clapton, of course. It's a different time so he would have learned something, I think, but I don't protect what he did.

In the '60s, the Sunset Strip became insane. The sidewalks and the traffic were jammed. It was a renaissance.

Being a writer is a very difficult craft. Just like learning an instrument, it takes a long time and I couldn't really say I was a writer even after my first memoir.

If you surrender to the communal vision, sometimes, certainly in our case, you become more than the sum of your parts.