Skip to main content

Creativity Quote by Jim Sullivan

"Also I played on a lot of demos in the early days of the Stones"

About this Quote

There’s a quiet flex buried in the modesty here: “Also” is doing a lot of work. Jim Sullivan isn’t kicking the door down with a claim to rock history; he’s sliding it into the conversation as an aside, the way working musicians often do when they’ve spent a lifetime watching famous narratives harden around other people’s names. The line carries that studio-player ethos: you don’t announce your legacy, you mention it like a footnote and let the listener decide whether to gasp.

The phrase “played on a lot of demos” is especially telling. Demos are the pre-myth stage of music, where the stakes are supposedly low but the DNA gets set. Saying you were there for that is a way of asserting proximity to origin without pretending you authored it. It suggests he inhabited the liminal space between anonymous labor and immortal brand-building - the unglamorous engine room behind “the Stones” as a cultural monolith.

“Early days” sharpens the point: not the stadium-era juggernaut, but the scrappy period when a band is still becoming itself, when songs are mutable and personnel fluid. The subtext is a critique of how rock history gets told - as if genius arrives fully formed and fame neatly matches contribution. Sullivan’s intent feels less like bragging than record-setting: a reminder that scenes are built by networks, and that iconic acts often stand on the work of musicians whose names didn’t make the logo.

Quote Details

TopicMusic
SourceHelp us find the source
Cite

Citation Formats

APA Style (7th ed.)
Sullivan, Jim. (2026, January 14). Also I played on a lot of demos in the early days of the Stones. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/also-i-played-on-a-lot-of-demos-in-the-early-days-136284/

Chicago Style
Sullivan, Jim. "Also I played on a lot of demos in the early days of the Stones." FixQuotes. January 14, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/also-i-played-on-a-lot-of-demos-in-the-early-days-136284/.

MLA Style (9th ed.)
"Also I played on a lot of demos in the early days of the Stones." FixQuotes, 14 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/also-i-played-on-a-lot-of-demos-in-the-early-days-136284/. Accessed 12 Feb. 2026.

More Quotes by Jim Add to List
Jim Sullivan on Early Demos with the Stones
Click to enlarge Portrait | Landscape

About the Author

England Flag

Jim Sullivan (born February 14, 1941) is a Musician from England.

25 more quotes available

View Profile

Similar Quotes

Boz Scaggs, Musician