Robbie Robertson Quotes

Sixteen years on the road is long enough. Twenty years is unthinkable.

There's a thing that has happened in the U.S. where the spirit has been beaten so badly and so you feel no unity in the voice of the country.

There is an extraordinary collaborative spirit when you are learning and growing.

You never know what could be interesting tomorrow.

Working on 'The Last Waltz' introduced me to Martin Scorsese, and I had been a movie bug since I was a young kid.

At a young age I thought, 'Wow, that fiddle thing, that's pretty cool. That mandolin is great. These drums, I like these drums ... ' They were Indian drums. And I was saying, 'But that guitar. That guitar. Girls are going to like that guitar.'

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.'

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.'

One of the things I feel very strong about is the achievement of the Band really being a complete band.

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 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.

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?

It's a bit of a sore spot, the Thanksgiving in Indian country.

Boy, do I got some stories to tell.

I was a storyteller for The Band. It was never, 'Hey guys, here's a song about what happened to me.' I was always more comfortable writing fiction.

I do not have yearnings to get back on a bus. If it means getting on a bus, I don't want to do it.

It's easy to be a genius in your twenties. In your forties, it's difficult.

The native music of North America, the original-roots music of this country, is also the underworld music of this country.

I never really had a teenage experience. I went from childhood to maturity, and in some ways, it short-circuited me emotionally.

The kid at 9 or 10 who knows who Billie Holiday is ... that's the coolest thing ever.

Lord please save his soul, he was the king of rock and roll.

I remember from my earliest years people speaking, you know, in a certain kind of rhythm and telling stories and sharing experiences in a way that was different in Indian country than it was other places. And I was really struck by this and obviously very affected by it, because it's always come out in my songs.

I think that there's always great music being made. Always has been, always will be.

The direction is going the right way for respect for aboriginal people in North America, and all we can do is stand up and say, 'Please do it faster.'

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.

I don't want to be one of those people saying, 'Remember when things were better?'

Some people love some music, and they hear it a year later and they think, 'What was I thinking?'

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 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.

I'm always optimistic.

I'm really lucky because I found myself in a position where I can do whatever I want to do. I can make records, produce records, make movies, or I can do nothing. I'm not a slave to the dollar.

Give us the strength, give us the wisdom, and give us tomorrow.

It would be nice to abandon the verse-chorus-bridge structure completely, and make it so none of these things are definable ... Make up new names for them. Instead of a bridge, you can call it a highway, or an overpass ... Music should never be harmless.

I'm not an activist.

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.

After the 'Last Waltz' concert, it just seemed very healthy to me to put making a record as far out of my mind as I possibly could.

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.

My mother is extraordinary. She understood me and never tried to hold me back.

I haven't been to many music events where somebody was performing and it actually made me cry.

Say a prayer for the lost generation, who spin the wheel out of desperation.

If I can play one note and make you cry, then that's better than those fancy dancers playing twenty notes.

I really have to feel a sense of freedom in my storytelling.

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.

I like to work on records when I feel inspired, not because it's expected of me.

There's a bookstore in New York where you could buy scripts, and I got addicted to them because they were easy, quick reads ... and the pictures were so vivid.

In Americana, the facts and the dreams seem to be all the same to me.

You fog the mind, you stir the soul.

By the time I was 13, I was the only one in London, Ontario, who knew how to play rock n' roll.

In a lot of groups, you can change a musician, and it doesn't mean anything.

It's extraordinary that revolutions taking place around the world were sparked by communication on the Internet.

I think the world of Chuck Berry.

Bob Dylan is as influential as any artist that there has been.

To find a new star in the sky is pretty hard.

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.

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.

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'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.