Time & Perspective Quote by George Benson

Benson slips a quiet manifesto into a chatty, musician-to-musician aside: the guitar isn’t a trophy you win, it’s a moving target you keep chasing. Coming from a player whose sound helped define smooth jazz and crossover virtuosity, that matters. He could easily posture as the finished product. Instead, he frames listening as a survival skill, almost an ethical stance. The repeated “yeah” and “I try” keep the tone humble and conversational, but the intent is pointed: mastery is maintenance.

The subtext is generational without being defensive. Benson isn’t pleading relevance; he’s mapping how relevance actually works. “New concepts,” “where the instrument is going,” “new theories” - he talks about guitar like a research field, not a nostalgia machine. That’s a subtle rebuke to the rockist idea that the “greats” already solved the instrument in 1971. For Benson, innovation isn’t sacrilege; it’s the whole ecosystem. “It is going some places” carries genuine excitement, but also a hint of urgency: if you don’t listen, you don’t just miss trends, you miss the future.

Contextually, jazz has always been a conversation - standards as shared language, improvisation as argument. Benson extends that logic to guitar culture at large, where technique, tone, and technology evolve in public. The line “good vibe with new theories” is classic Benson: he refuses to separate feeling from intellect. Progress has to swing.