Folk Singers Of The 60s Quotes

When I was young, my mother [folk singer Kate McGarrigle] brought home this recording of Verdi's Requiem and we listened to it from top to bottom. By the end of it, I was a completely different person. It was literally a requiem mass for my former self. I was about 12 or 13. The Requiem just totally hooked into what I was going through emotionally - discovering my sexuality right at the time when AIDS was devastating my community and dealing with intense parental situations. ~ Rufus Wainwright

When I started out playing guitar and singing, I was about twelve, going on thirteen. The role models for me back then were the folk singers. They all had these high, really nice voices and ranges, like Judy Collins and Joan Baez, and then later, of course, Joni Mitchell and Linda Ronstadt. I decided early on that I was going to learn how to write songs really, really well, because I didn't want to have to compete as a singer. I didn't feel that it was my strong point. ~ Lucinda Williams

I'm called a folk singer, and I'm not too sure about that. I went about my life approaching music not from the point of view of a singer, but from the point of view of an actor. That's how I first started to sing. ~ Harry Belafonte

I come from a school of people, folk singers, and the tradition there is troubadours, and you're carrying a message. Now admittedly, our job is partly just to make you boogie, just make you want to dance. Part of our job is to take you on a little voyage, tell you a story. ~ David Crosby

Harout Pamboukjian is one of the biggest Armenian folk singers in the world. In the '70s, he was making these records that were really Zeppelin-influenced. ~ Serj Tankian

There were very few real folk singers you know, though I liked Dominic Behan a bit and there was some good stuff to be heard in Liverpool. Just occasionally you hear very old records on the radio or TV of real workers in Ireland or somewhere singing these songs and the power of them is fantastic. ~ John Lennon

We were playing a festival in Dublin the other week. There was this other group, like, warming up in the next sort of chalet, and they were terrible. I said, 'Shut them cunts up!' And they were still warming up, so I threw a bottle at them. The bands said, 'That's the Sons of Mumford' or something. 'They're number five in charts!' I just thought they were a load of retarded Irish folk singers. ~ Mark E. Smith

I lived in Italy for a number of years and I was really digging around trying to get my hands dirty, trying to learn about Italian music. And what I ended up gravitating towards was this stuff from the '50s and '60s and maybe early '70s, where there were these incredibly talented pop singers that weren't using pop bands. ~ Mike Patton

I don't think of myself as a folk singer per se, but I really like blues and string-band music. When I started listening to records when I was a teenager, the folk boom was going on. ~ Loudon Wainwright III

Judy Henske, who was the then reigning queen of folk music, said to me at The Troubadour, 'Honey, in this town there are four sexes. Men, women, homosexuals, and girl singers.' ~ Linda Ronstadt

We humans are naturally disposed to worship gods and heroes, to build our pantheons and valhallas. I would rather see that impulse directed into the adoration of daft singers, thicko footballers and air-headed screen actors than into the veneration of dogmatic zealots, fanatical preachers, militant politicians and rabid cultural commentators. ~ Stephen Fry

Coming out of the '60s and the Vietnam War in America, it was commonplace for people to make films that had relevance to them. And since the '70s, cinema has gone almost entirely in the direction of spectacle and escapism and superhero films. ~ Dan Gilroy

I think that in the past, in the '50s and '60s, after the existentialists and beatniks and hippie movements, the big deal was, Don't sell out. We live in a society that by virtue of the speed we communicate and sell, everything sells. The danger is buying in; that your concern becomes success, rather than fulfillment. They're two different beasts, and my feeling is that you should seek fulfillment. You should not measure your worth in how much you have or how popular you are, but how happy you are with what you do. ~ Guillermo Del Toro

The '60s were a very turbulent time for colored people. Being away at war was a chance for them to escape the racial bullshit for a while. It was a shame it came down to that kind of choice.
Don't get me wrong. There were plenty of guys, who tried to bring that racial crap over there with them. However, when the shit hits the fan, you don't give a damn about who's standing next to you, saving your ass. You certainly don't care what color his skin is or what language he speaks. All that matters to you is that he is an American G.I. Government Issued, baby! ~ Jason Medina

And that's the kind of thing people think, you know, that if you sign up to be a singer-songwriter you know how to deal with people setting up hate websites, or people being obsessed with you and crying when you touch them, but you don't, and you just have to deal with. ~ Jessie J.

I spent most of the '60s, when I was starting to try to write novels, living and working in Greece and Turkey. These are countries where the ancient past is interfused with the daily present, and I remember being struck with wonder at the constant sense of continuity and connection, the reminders that lie in wait for you at every turn. ~ Barry Unsworth

I'm much more conscious of historical events since the '60s. In the '60s, I was insulated by my own addictions, my own lifestyle, from what was going on in the world. After I recovered I was amazed at certain people who had died. I hadn't noticed that they had gone. Not friends ... I'm talking about public figures who had passed away. ~ Tennessee Williams

I just hope that I can be kind of like the Beatles. I really like that kind of model. I like the way that without losing integrity they could change through fashion and not look back at the '60s and vomit when they saw what they'd done. ~ Damien Hirst

Augusta counted herself among those fortunate souls on the planet whose passion had become their profession. Music was as necessary to her as breathing, and it filled all of her days, and helping young singers understand how to make their voices soar fulfilled her as nothing else could. ~ Susan Moore Jordan

I say, as a singer grows older, his conception grows a little deeper, because he lives life and he understands what he is trying to say a little more. And I think this gives. If a singer tries to find out what's happening in life, it gives him a better insight on telling the story of the song he is trying to sing. ~ Sam Cooke

The fog turned a strange yellow, then orange, then black. The gilded winged statue Victory at Buckingham Palace retreated into mist. St. Paul's was a hazy outline, ghostlike in the gloom. La Traviata at the Sadler's Wells theatre was terminated midway because the audience could no longer see the singers on stage. Pedestrians noticed how everything below the waist disappeared. Knees, shoes, dogs became indistinguishable. The Great Smog was days and nights of people and things passing out of sight and existence. It seemed a fitting time for a mother to evaporate. ~ Kyo Maclear

There's been a lot of comparisons to "The Prisoner," and sometimes people take a negative tact on that, but to be really honest, I count that as a compliment, in the sense that what I felt "The Prisoner" was for the '60's, in how the individual triumphs over the state and authority, our show is really about how complacent we have become in our lives, which are scrutinized. ~ Remi Aubuchon

I want to use songs that everybody knows or thinks they know. I want to show them a different side of it and open up that world in a more unique way. You have to believe what the words are saying and the words are as important as the melody. Unless you believe the song and have lived it, there's little sense in performing it. I never wanted to be a singer that ~ Bob Dylan

If you are in a play, and you catch a cold, you are able to muddle through. If you are carrying a musical, it's a different thing altogether. It's the great fear of any singer's life. ~ Elaine Paige

The Latin musical tradition is very rich and gives the singer a lot of freedom to explore a range of. ~ Ednita Nazario

Only black people in the whole neighborhood, so let's break it down: Me, I'm a decent comedian, I'm a'ight. Mary J. Blige, one of the greatest R&B singers to ever walk the Earth. Jay-Z, one of the greatest rappers to ever live. Eddie Murphy, one of the funniest actors to ever, ever do it. Do you know what the white man that lives next door to me does for a living? He's a f*****g dentist. ~ Chris Rock

I come from a time when pop music was the coin of the cultural realm and in a certain way was the only coin of the realm; movies didn't matter as much, and not TV - it was all about pop music. In the era when I started - which was the early '60s - it was all about singles leading to albums. ~ Fred Seibert

My brother is the lead singer of The Torn, and my parents are in a country duo. ~ Sheridan Smith

The video for 'Whatever' is kind of a documentary in a way. It's showing that love can last. Not just in your early 20s or your late 30s, but in your 50s, 60s and 70s. There's an awful myth out there that when you get married, love and lovemaking fade. It's not true. ~ Jill Scott

Corina Bartra is a very intriguing singer. On Son Zumbon ... the music utilizes tricky rhythms, the leader's haunting voice, and plenty of short solos. There is no lack on intensity in this program. ~ Scott Yanow

When the hippie era ended and the hangover began, as idealism gives way to disillusionment, the hair of the marchers and street-dancers kept getting longer, and soon it began to tangle. Free love deteriorated into loveless promiscuity, our great electric Kool-Aid acid test churned out an entire generation of burnt-out old relics, and the hair, once a symbol of freedom, became symbolic of the new face of prison, a lawlessness which taken to its logical extreme would imprison all of society as our growing criminal element took to the streets. ~ Tommy Walker

Not only was Dan Cooper likely an alias, but many people suspected at the time were people living under assumed names. The '50s and '60s were a time when some people were desperate to leave their lives. They felt trapped in their marriages or their jobs, and they were seeking freedom. And one of the ways to do that, because technology wasn't advanced as it is today, was just to take over somebody's name. ~ Geoffrey Gray

The end of the '60s was a terrible time. I was in Los Angeles then, and I remember the night someone ran into the studio and told us about the Manson murders. Then suddenly something happened, the '60s disappeared. The '70s were completely different. ~ Claes Oldenburg

I was always interested in animals, but when I was little, animal behavior was still a new science. It was available to become a veterinarian, it was available to study biology, but not specifically animal behavior. In the '60s, Jane Goodall was the founder of this new science. ~ Isabella Rossellini

I was worried that all the corners of the earth had been explored, all the great battles fought. The famous people on TV were athletes and actresses and singers. What did they stand for? I wondered: Had the time for heroes passed? ~ Eric Greitens

Expressiveness in others enriched Mrs. Singer's confidence in her own interpretations, possibly because a certain fear that she had not accomplished anything in her life left her all the more desirous of discovering easy clues to less consequential questions. ~ William T. Vollmann

But a lot of things probably will never change - like our friendships and our working relationships. As far as me and Patrick [Stump, the singer] and all of Fall Out Boy, it's in a vacuum. ~ Pete Wentz

My whole career from the early 70s on has been mind-blowing. I didn't imagine in my life that I would ever be considered a guitar player first of all because I started off as a singer. ~ George Benson

But in those days - in the mid-'50s, early '60s - there was less than 300 radio stations that were playing country music and a lot of that wasn't full time. ~ Mel Tillis

A song is no song unless the circumstance is free and fine. If a singer sing from a sense of duty or from seeing no way to escape,I had rather have none. Those only can sleep who do not care to sleep; and those only write or speak best who do not too much respect the writing or the speaking. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

For me, and maybe for many religious kids of the '60s, the church lost relevance the more it became a surrogate in the movement for social and political change. ~ Mike McCurry

Lord Cut-Glass, in his kitchen full of time, squats down alone to a dogdish, marked Fido, of peppery fish-scraps and listens to the voices of his sixty-six clocks, one for each year of his loony age, and watches, with love, their black-and-white moony loudlipped faces tocking the earth away: slow clocks, quick clocks, pendulumed heart-knocks, china, alarm, grandfather, cuckoo; clocks shaped like Noah's whirring Ark, clocks that bicker in marble ships, clocks in the wombs of glass women, hourglass chimers, tu-wit-tuwoo clocks, clocks that pluck tunes, Vesuvius clocks all black bells and lava, Niagara clocks that cataract their ticks, old time weeping clocks with ebony beards, clocks with no hands for ever drumming out time
without ever knowing what time it is. His sixty-six singers are all set at different hours. Lord Cut-Glass lives in a house and a life at siege. Any minute or dark day now, the unknown enemy will loot and savage downhill, but they will not catch him napping. Sixty-six different times in his fish-slimy kitchen ping, strike, tick, chime, and tock. ~ Dylan Thomas

I was extreme ... from skateboarder to hip-hopper to rave child to lead singer of a rock band - I did it all, and all at the same time. ~ Pink

Your brother Robb has been crowned King in the North. You and Aemon have that in common. A king for a brother." said Mormont.

"And this too," said Jon. "A vow."

The Old Bear gave a loud snort, and the raven took flight, flapping in a circle about the room. "Give me a man for every vow I've seen broken and the Wall will never lack for defenders."

"I've always known that Rob will be Lord of Winterfell."

Mormont gave a whistle, and the bird flew to him again and settled on his arm. "A lord's one thing, a king's another. They will garb your brother Robb in silks, satins, and velvets of a hundred different colors, while you live and die in black ringmail. He will wed some beautiful princess and father sons on her. You'll have no wife, nor will you ever hold a child of your own blood in your arms. Robb will rule, you will serve. Men will call you a crow. Him they'll call `Your Grace'. Singers will praise every little thing he does, while your greatest deeds all go unsung. Tell me that none of this troubles you, Jon… and I'll name you a liar, and know I have the truth of it."

Jon drew himself up, taut as a bowstring "And if it did trouble me, what might I do, bastard as I am?"

"What will you do?" Mormont asked. "Bastard as you are."

"Be troubled," said Jon, "and keep my vows. ~ George R.R. Martin

Man, I live in Nashville. I know how good other songwriters and singers are around here. There's a wealth of talent in this town, not to mention the people who shoot in for a week or two to try their hand on lower Broad or the other venues around town. ~ Jamey Johnson

Much of what is written on the craft is biased in one way or another, so weed out what is useful to you and ignore the rest. I see the next few years as being crucial in the transformation of our culture away from the patriarchal death cults and toward the love of life, of nature, of the female principle. The craft is only one path among the many opening up for women, and many of us will blaze new trails as we explore the uncharted country of our own interiors. The heritage, the culture, the knowledge of the ancient priestesses, healers, poets, singers, and seers were nearly lost, but a seed survived the flames that will blossom in a new age into thousands of flowers. The long sleep of Mother Goddess is ended. May She awaken in each of our hearts ~~ Merry meet, merry part, and blessed be. ~ Starhawk

I'm not singer; every time I have the urge to sing something, I don't want to do it in front of certain people. I was always that kid afraid of failing, so I just didn't do things. I don't know how to ride a bike, I don't know how to drive. I broke out of shell a bit, and I still am. I think it's more about trying to be the full person I imagine myself to be, regardless of what that means in terms of labels, shade from people, and all of that. ~ Le1f

Nicky Egan has the finesse of Bonnie Raitt merged with the primal force of Janis Joplin. It is a rare combination. Her passion is a joy to behold - and her talent is undeniable. She belongs in any conversation about great contemporary female soul singers. If you're up for a revelatory evening, then put her high on your list. ~ Steve Morse

I am, as it happens, a baby boomer, but not one who feels any broad-gauge nostalgia for the '60s and '70s. My attitude resembles that of my parents, who were born in the '20s and lived through the Great Depression and World War II. ~ Terry Teachout