One of my favorite albums is Bob Gibson and Bob Camp, ‘At the Gate of Horn.’ It was a really dynamic album, almost like The Beatles, and way before its time… around 1960 or so. – Roger McGuinn
People have told me that other artists have been influenced by my music, and it’s flattering. It’s a wonderful thing. – Roger McGuinn
I play a couple basic folks songs and break them down. I did that on a six string. I can’t recall all the songs on it. There’s some finger picking on it. – Roger McGuinn
I’ve always loved the songs of the sea. I was first introduced to them back in 1957, at the Old Town School of Folk Music. I used to go to Pete Seeger concerts, and he would do songs like ‘Ruben Ranzo’ and talk about how the sailors sang songs to do their work – to raise the anchors, pull up the sails and that sort of thing. – Roger McGuinn
I started playing guitar back in ’56. I was a teenager, and guitars had just come in, and I had a thing for it and got one. Started learning lead breaks from songs, because that was the easiest thing to do at the time. I had the guitar for two years before I learned any chords. Really. – Roger McGuinn
Yes, basically, like you said, I’ll work out a chord pattern and work out the lyrics over that. – Roger McGuinn
That’s my favorite subject because it really levels the playing field for artists these days. You don’t have to sell out to the record company. You don’t have to get a five hundred thousand dollars, or whatever, and pay them back for the rest of your life to record a record. – Roger McGuinn
I’ve always considered myself a folk singer, even though we strapped on Rickenbacker guitars and played pretty loud. – Roger McGuinn
The original Byrds were very much Beatles-influenced, and then we gradually got our own sound. We started mixing things together more. – Roger McGuinn
I think the Internet is an awful lot like FM radio was when it broke out in the late ’60s. It’s kind of a wild and wily kind of format. They could play 20 songs in a row that had the word ‘blue’ in them, or whatever they wanted to do. – Roger McGuinn
Now, you can just get a laptop, get some software, put a microphone on it and make a record. You have to know how to do it. It does help if you’ve had 35 or 40 years of experience in the studio. But, it still levels the playing field so artists can record their own stuff. – Roger McGuinn
To me, being in the big time is not that big of a deal. I’ve been there; I know what it is. It’s exciting, but it’s also a lot of work and pressure. I love sort of flying under the radar where we can play theaters and sell CD’s on the Internet, and it’s really kind of a cool time. – Roger McGuinn
I was raised a Roman Catholic and had to go to the eight o’clock Mass every morning and have communion and wear a tie, kind of like a restricted life style. Then in the ’60s, we got wild and let it go and started looking in other places to see where God really was, and I came back to the Christian thing. – Roger McGuinn
Well, I guess that early 12 string. The first Martin I bought. I bought it around 1957 with money I earned as a janitor assistant. I bought brand new. I still have that. – Roger McGuinn
I think Wilco is going to definitely stand the test of time – no question – and Uncle Tupleo, and the whole No Depression scene, which is now alt-country. I think that’s going to be around a long time. – Roger McGuinn
But in my imagination this whole thing developed and I started mixing up old folk songs with the Beatles beat and taking them down to Greenwich Village and playing them for the people there. – Roger McGuinn
That’s one of the things I like best about folk music is the beautiful melodies – and the harmonies – that exist in it. And of course, some of the stories, the story songs. – Roger McGuinn
I always got a kick out of it when they called it the California Sound because it really came out of Liverpool and Greenwich Village. – Roger McGuinn
I think what makes the Byrds stand up all these years is the basis in folk music. Folk music, being a timeless art form, is the foundation of the Byrds. We were all from a folk background. We considered ourselves folk singers even when we strapped on electric instruments and dabbled in different things. – Roger McGuinn
I’m a huge fan of home recording. I think it levels the playing field. You don’t need $100,000 to record a studio CD. – Roger McGuinn
I love being on the sea and the rolling of the ship, and for me, it’s not really happening until we get a little wave action going, I love that feeling. – Roger McGuinn
I got into computers back in the early ’80s, so it was a natural progression of learning about e-mail in the mid-’80s and getting into the Internet when it opened up in the early ’90s. – Roger McGuinn
