The 65-year-old Oklahoma-born artist, Vince Gill, achieved fame first as one of the frontmen for the country rock band Pure Prairie League in the 1970s and later as a solo artist in the mid-’80s.
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To date, Gill has recorded more than 20 studio LPs and charted more than 40 singles on the U.S. Billboard Hot Country charts. He’s also sold more than 26 million records. Not to mention the 22 Grammy Awards he’s received, which is more than any other male country artist.
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In 2017, Gill, along with Deacon Frey, was hired by the Eagles to replace the late Glenn Frey.
But with all this success in these various arenas, one may wonder what Gill had to say about the world around him, his craft, life, and love outside of his many song lyrics.
So, without further ado, here are the 16 best Vince Gill quotes.
1. “Success is always temporary. When all is said and done, the only thing you’ll have left is your character.”
2. “I do not like being famous. I like being normal.”
3. “Whether it is successful or not is not the exercise for me. It is not up to me. It is out of my hands now. I am not going to in two years have hindsight and say I made a big mistake.”
4. “The real beauty of it—[the] key to my life was playing key chords on a banjo. For somebody else, it may be a golf club that mom and dad put in their hands or a baseball or ballet lessons. A real gift to give to me and put it in writing.”
5. “The funny thing is, people’s perceptions of what a song is about are usually wrong a majority of the time. But they’re still going to read what they want to into it.”
6. “My last two records that I made were both quite pointed in one direction and I think I do my best stuff when it’s all over the map when there’s a couple of traditional things, a couple of pretty rocking things.”
7. “And from my place, and from the time that I went through my divorce, I also had my father pass away in the middle of all that. And it kind of made everything else just kind of like the back burner, you know?”
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8. “It is not fun singing about losing somebody like that, but at the same time it was easy to write because the memories were so real and vivid and so much a part of who I am.”
9. “I made records in the past that are as traditional as any other country records that have been made, but at the same time the records have a contemporary slant on it too.”
10. “Well I think in all the thirty years I’ve been doing this now and being gone from home and all that stuff it’s really, it’s not about what I’ve achieved and if I’ve become a better player, or played better ten years ago than I do today.”
11. “Yes, the companionship is amazing. You know, you can get that physical attraction that happens is great, but then there’s an awful lot of time and the rest of the day that you have to fill.”
12. “You learn a whole lot more about a person if they have bad breaks and all those kinds of things.”
13. “I can sit and analyze everything and beat myself up and say you don’t quite sing as good as you used to, you’re writing better songs maybe than you used to, but to me, it’s just the journey.”
14. “It really does take a lot of time to make records, to be in the studio and do all that stuff.”
15. “The real amazing thing about all of this is I think I’ve maintained the mentality of a musician throughout it all, which I’m proudest of. And I’m still playing on people’s records and singing on people’s records.”
16. “With The Key, it was, I had gone through a divorce and losing my father, and just kinda really reminiscing about how much I loved the traditional side of country music, so I made a record that was really traditional from start to finish.”
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