Andy Summers

I don't have a great nostalgia for the past.

It's hard to avoid the past but one goes forward.

It is not very practical in today's world when you tour all over the place having a big band.

In The Police, in a trio situation - which I've come back to now - it's just so wide open that it does actually provide this arena where you can play with a certain freedom.

There was a period when I'd just come out of college where I'd been playing classical guitar and I suddenly realised that it wasn't what I wanted to do with the rest of my life.

If the guitar synthesizer is really going to stand as a synthesizer on its own, it needs to develop a more characteristic sound; I don' think it's gotten there yet.

My favorite sounds are the high, spacey ones that are very ambient.

The most obvious thing you can't do with a guitar synthesizer is to really sound like a guitar.

If I'm playing a violin thing, for instance, I tend to respond to that sound with the way I finger.

I'm better for it and I prefer to keep things simple and see what sounds I can get out of my head and hands rather than relying on a sound that someone else created.

I think we are coming to a new era where people will record much faster.

I spend a lot of time working as a painter and in my studio I go from upstairs where I paint to downstairs where I play and record, so I get this thing crossing over.