Creativity Quote by Andy Summers

There is something almost indecently tactile in Andy Summers framing musicianship as a conversation between flesh and sound. “I tend to respond to that sound with the way I finger” isn’t just a throwaway bit of shop talk; it’s a quiet manifesto against the myth that great playing starts in the intellect. Summers is describing a loop: timbre triggers touch, and touch reshapes timbre. The instrument isn’t a tool you command, it’s a surface that pushes back.

The “violin thing” matters. Summers, best known for sculpting The Police’s icy, high-tension guitar parts, is pointing to an approach rooted in bowed-string expressiveness: phrasing that feels like breath, notes that swell and lean, articulation that’s closer to speech than to riffs. Violin implies continuous tone and micro-gesture; you don’t just hit a note, you arrive at it. So his “fingering” becomes less about technical correctness and more about choreography - pressure, angle, vibrato, release.

Subtext: the body is a translator of emotion before it’s a servant of theory. In a studio-era world obsessed with gear, presets, and perfection, Summers is arguing for a kind of responsive musicianship where the ear leads and the hands follow. It’s also a sly reminder that style is physical: your signature isn’t only in what you play, but in how your skin meets the string.