"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"
About this Quote
The subtext is less “I didn’t like classical” than “I didn’t want the life that came with it.” Post-college is a pressure cooker for that kind of reckoning, when the scaffolding of education disappears and you’re forced to audition your future in real time. His phrasing, “the rest of my life,” is doing heavy lifting: it’s not about a gig or a genre; it’s about refusing to let sunk costs dictate your adulthood.
Context matters because Summers becomes Andy Summers of The Police, a band built on tension between craft and volatility. His later playing keeps the classical discipline but reroutes it into texture, space, and bite - the kind of musical signature that only happens when someone doesn’t abandon training, but stops obeying it. The line reads like a modest confession, but it’s also a blueprint for artistic reinvention: the courage to demote expertise in service of desire.
Quote Details
| Topic | Career |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
| Cite | Cite this Quote |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Summers, Andy. (n.d.). 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. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/there-was-a-period-when-id-just-come-out-of-38235/
Chicago Style
Summers, Andy. "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." FixQuotes. Accessed February 3, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/there-was-a-period-when-id-just-come-out-of-38235/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"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." FixQuotes, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/there-was-a-period-when-id-just-come-out-of-38235/. Accessed 3 Feb. 2026.

