Creativity Quote by Boz Scaggs

Identity politics, Scaggs-style: before the satin falsetto, before the yacht-rock tag, before the sleek studio sheen that people now treat as the whole story, there was a kid thinking in six strings. "I was a guitar player first off" sounds like casual biography, but it’s really a quiet act of self-defense against a career that’s been repeatedly summarized by its most polished surfaces.

The phrasing matters. "First off" isn’t grand; it’s almost throwaway, a conversational shrug that signals authenticity without begging for it. He’s not claiming virtuoso status or rewriting the record. He’s repositioning the origin point. In a music culture that loves to file artists under the sound that sold best, Scaggs is reminding listeners that the singer-songwriter frontman is often built on an instrumental foundation. Guitar player implies apprenticeship: learning rhythm, harmony, touch, the social language of bands. It also implies labor, not mystique.

Context does the rest. Scaggs came up in the late-60s ecosystem where credibility was earned by playing, not just posing, and he passed through scenes (Austin, the Bay Area, the Muscle Shoals-to-L.A. studio pipeline) where musicianship was currency. By the time his most famous work arrived, the machine around him could make him look like a voice riding immaculate production. This line pushes back: the pop figure you remember began as a working musician. Subtext: don’t mistake refinement for fabrication, and don’t confuse the hitmaking era with the whole person.