You don't stumble upon your heritage. It's there, just waiting to be explored and shared.
Robbie Robertson
To find a new star in the sky is pretty hard.
The road has taken a lot of the great ones: Hank Williams, Buddy Holly, Otis Redding, Janis, Jimi Hendrix, Elvis.
I never really had a teenage experience. I went from childhood to maturity, and in some ways, it short-circuited me emotionally.
For years after 'The Last Waltz,' I got all kinds of silly movie offers - or, maybe, not silly, but parts that are not my calling... lots of offers to play some wonderful boyfriend.
If I can play one note and make you cry, then that's better than those fancy dancers playing twenty notes.
It's a bit of a sore spot, the Thanksgiving in Indian country.
Some bands today have the experience of really working together and honing their craft. And other bands are very much like, 'I just got a guitar for Christmas, let's start a band.' And you can hear the difference.
We need to have a taste factor in our life. It isn't about what's popular; it's about what's really good.
I'm not an activist.
That whole lifestyle - make a record, do a tour: I know how to do that. It doesn't interest me.
Bob Dylan is as influential as any artist that there has been.
I feel so lucky to have been in a group where it was a real band. This wasn't a singer and guitar player and some other guys.
I am fascinated by the places that music comes from, like fife-and-drum blues from southern Mississippi or Cajun music out of Lafayette, Louisiana, shape-note singing, old harp singing from the mountains - I love that stuff. It's like the beginning of rock and roll: something comes down from the hills, and something comes up from the delta.
I've always been in love with that Delta-flavored music... the music that came from Mississippi and Memphis and, especially, New Orleans. When I was 14, I was in a wanna-be New Orleans band in Toronto.
I think, some countries, you have to be dead to have your picture on a stamp.
I asked Bob Dylan to paint the album cover for 'Music from Big Pink.' He said, 'Yeah, let me see what I can come up with.'
A lot of times when you're making a record, you put your head down and charge forward until you're done. You just hope that the ideas hold up, because you're kind of lost in your own storm.
Most of my younger Native American friends are not in any way looking for sympathy, and they're not looking to lay guilt on anybody. They have their dignity, and they do what they do.
My thirst for knowledge and experience comes from the idea that once you learned something, it was time to learn something else. I missed out on a formal educational process, so I'm making up for that.
Music isn't necessarily made to last, and there's always been disposable music.
Everybody grows in their own way.
I love the idea of having a kid who says, 'Yeah, of course I knew about Billie Holiday and Johnny Cash when I was nine years old.'
When I was 14 years old, I had the opportunity to meet Buddy Holly. I asked him how he got that big, powerful sound out of his guitar amp. He said, 'I blew a speaker and decided not to get it fixed.'
Music should never be harmless.
I saw Ray Charles at Massey Hall.
I admire those old road dogs, Willie Nelson, Bob Dylan. That's their life.
My mother was a Mohawk, born and raised on a reservation, and when I was a kid, she would take me there to visit her relatives.
I don't want to be one of those people saying, 'Remember when things were better?'
Once you establish a foundation of knowing what the greatest recording artists of all time were... Wouldn't you want your kids to know this stuff?
The Band is probably the ultimate example of people taking all kinds of music, from gospel to blues to mountain music to folk music to on and on and on and on and putting them all in this big pot and mixing up a new gumbo.
There's something so healthy about young people speaking up in unity.
The native music of North America, the original-roots music of this country, is also the underworld music of this country.
Chuck Berry told me if it wasn't for Louis Jordan, he wouldn't have probably ever even got into music. That Louis Jordan changed everything and made him want to become a musician.
Record making is an extraordinary experience.
People go through periods when things are dark and cloudy, and they talk dark and cloudy.
It's easy to be a genius in your twenties. In your forties, it's difficult.
Time is not kind to everything.
My mother told me when I was a toddler and in the crib that they would have music playing, and the thing when I lit up was boogie-woogie or something out of the Louie Jordan period of sometimes big bands, and then all kinds of things.
I wanted to develop a guitar style where phrases and lines get there just in the nick of time, like with Curtis Mayfield and Steve Cropper. Subtleties mean so much, and there is a stunning beauty in them.
I thought of a lot of people from the same era when I was making a lot of records that had continued making a lot of records. A lot of it didn't seem terribly inspired.
I think that there's always great music being made. Always has been, always will be.
When I was younger, I thought I was too young to really be personal. I thought that what I was feeling and thinking might be half-baked.
Do you know what a skin walker is? It's a thing in Indian mythology. There are certain people born with this gift, and they're able to actually get inside you and mess with your feelings and with your mind. And if a skin walker chooses to get a hold of you, there's not much you can do.
I play guitar quite a bit, because I'm always in search of something. I don't play to jam, but because I'm fishing. I'm looking for something, that I hope you can never find. If I do find it, I'm afraid I won't have a need to do this any more.
I always like to keep one hand in the tepee and the other hand in the synagogue. Wouldn't it be great if there was a combination of the two? You could go to synagogue, and it would be really hot in there.
People think I left The Band and spoiled this whole thing, and that's not what happened. Nobody broke up The Band. Nobody ever said, 'That's it, we're done.'
There is an extraordinary collaborative spirit when you are learning and growing.
I've been really fortunate that I've been at a lot of critical crossroads in my musical journey. When I look back, there are some pretty interesting things to look at.
I love traditional music. But in any culture around the world, there is the historic and cultural music and everything that's been passed down and passed down, and hopefully you take that, and then you take it, you know, the next distance, and then somebody else takes it the next distance.
