Art Pepper Quotes

"If I have a drink, she [Art's wife, Laurie Pepper] can tell immediately, She'll be sitting at a table or something ... this happened just recently in this club; she was sitting with these friends of mine, I started playing a tune, and all of a sudden she turned round, looked at me, looked back at them and said: "Art's been drinking." And they didn't hear anything different at all than the first set. I played a couple of notes, and she knew. She went up to the bar, asked for the tab, and she saw that I'd had two drinks." - Art Pepper

source: Interview with Les Tomkins (1979)

Art Pepper Quotes

"Without (my wife) Laurie, I would never be here right now, I know that. I would either be in a coffin, or stashed away doing a life sentence some place. Or running and hiding some place, if I was still alive. I'm certain I wouldn't be playing music. She's just been perfect for me. And she's a protector also; she protects me from myself, from temptations, and bad associations. She's constantly shielding me from walking the red hot coals of existing as a game." - Art Pepper

source: Interview with Les Tomkins (1979)

Art Pepper Quotes

"I tried to stay out of it [drugs] for a long time, knowing what it might do. I think that, in my searching for something—for love, acceptance or whatever it is, to be a real man, to relate to my father, and all those things—going to prison was a help. It was part of my evolution, as a human being and as a musician. I feel that I have much deeper feelings now than I would have had, had I just been a musician all that time, which would have been a very dull existence. You know, I wanted something more than just being thought of as a musician, period. To be labelled 'Art Pepper, musician', period, would just be awful—what a boring life that would be." - Art Pepper

source: Interview with Les Tomkins (1979)

Art Pepper Quotes

"I enjoy playing with a big band occasionally, but it's too restricting; you really don't have a chance to stretch out and do what you want to do. Getting that thing of relating to a large band is great experience; I relate much better, though, if it's a small band." - Art Pepper

source: Interview with Les Tomkins (1979)

Art Pepper Quotes

"Alto (saxophone) is just a very hard instrument; there's so few people that play it really well. I feel it's the best one, too, now. At first I didn't feel that way; I wanted to be a tenor player. It took a long time for me to feel that alto was the most expressive of the saxophones." - Art Pepper

source: Interview with Les Tomkins (1979)

Art Pepper Quotes

"The way so many musicians slavishly imitated Coltrane, that's the way it was with Charlie Parker — only even more so, if that can be imagined. Everyone that I knew changed totally. But they took the worst things of his playing—that harsh sound; it just didn't come off the way they did it. The way he did it was great, Their way wasn't good at all. I just would listen to 'em, say: 'That's a Bird imitator', and that would be it; I would never care to listen to them again." - Art Pepper

source: Interview with Les Tomkins (1979)