Top 45 Robbie Robertson Quotes

Cowboys had guitars. And they sang country ’cause they lived in the country.

I don’t like overt traditionalism.

That whole lifestyle – make a record, do a tour: I know how to do that. It doesn’t interest 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.

People go through periods when things are dark and cloudy, and they talk dark and cloudy.

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

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.

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.

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.

Musical revolutions, I don’t know how many I’ve been through.

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

I don’t know – it’s a bit of a mystery of how things come about when they do. I don’t have a scientific explanation for it. Sometimes when you’re writing a song, you don’t know where you’re going.

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’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 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.’

The Band was rebelling against the rebellion. The rebellion went to a place where it became too obvious, too trendy, like you were just following the pack. So it was our choice to get off the bandwagon – no pun intended – and do things that were in our background and what was the most honest thing to do.

I’m always optimistic.

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

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.

Music should never be harmless.

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 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.’

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

Everybody grows in their own way.

When I was playing with Bob Dylan in, like, 1966, I was, like, 20 years old.

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

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.

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.

Record making is an extraordinary experience.

When you look at that period when Warhol and the Velvets and the Stones were doing things, it was this intersection of art and music. And then it went away.

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 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.

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.’

I’d always thought Cage’s ‘Root of an Unfocus’ would be great in a movie.

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?

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

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.’

The road has taken a lot of the great ones: Hank Williams, Buddy Holly, Otis Redding, Janis, Jimi Hendrix, Elvis.

A lot of people from my generation can’t write songs anymore, or it’s really hard and it’s an unpleasant experience. I don’t feel that way at all.

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

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

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.

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.