Words matter. These are the best Ry Cooder Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
I’ve done a fair amount of commercials. I did a bunch of Champion spark plug ads and Levi’s and Molson Beer. You wouldn’t know it. But some of it’s damn good.
I like the idea that something happens to everybody who comes to L.A. – whether they are Mexican, Irish, black, or hillbillies. You come here, and you leave all your traditions behind. And since there’s no traditions here, you just make one up.
You can play as good as you want, but you have to sing from a place of living.
It’s tremendously expensive to make a record on the basis of writing checks.
That’s what records do: represent a compressed, heightened version of the sound. Because of the compression of the tubes and microphones and the wax, it’s magic!
Sure, immigrants will do work that no-one else will do. There was even a movie about it – ‘A Day Without Mexicans.’
After all is said and done and institutions fail, people still have some ability to care for each other.
The blues is so expressive – nostalgic but not sentimental, mournful but not pathetic, so humble and close to the earth. It’s a nuance-filled thing.
Who does this, at age 71, try to put a tour together from scratch? I have to say it’s scary at times. But I like a challenge ’cause it keeps you on your toes.
‘Buena Vista Social Club’ is a great song and a difficult tune to play.
I went on tour with Ricky Skaggs and his wife, Sharon White, and the White Family in 2015. It was fantastic. They’re all the greatest singers of that country stuff, traditional country up into bluegrass.
I’m a great lover of ballads.
Uncle Dave Macon was a great balladeer and banjo player from the early part of the 19th century… He would take a social problem or something that he was looking at and make up a clever little song about it, you know, in a language everyone understood, a man of the people.
You have to be able to improvise and respond to what’s going on around you. Then you might get a good piece of work done.
If it hadn’t been for record people like Ralph Peer, the Chess brothers, and Alan Lomax, then life would’ve been unbelievably dull, and I would’ve been sacking groceries somewhere and probably, at this point, running a little 7-Eleven down by the airport.
I can’t help what people write or think. If somebody thinks I’m a serious archivist, they’re wrong. That’s been a problem. It’s a shame people take that attitude, because it affects how they listen to the music. It’s a big mistake to treat any pop music that way.
Music creates complicity, and then you feel less isolated.
I always like spoken word records.
On any given day, if I play the guitar, I can put myself somewhere. I always thought, ‘This is the way you go.’ It’s like a magic carpet, see?
I’ve been wanting an ice cream truck forever.
It’s good to see more young people playing instruments.
Being the front guy is a hard job.
The Delmore Brothers is hit music – very, very popular – and it still retains that rural flavor and simplicity. I always think of it as family music, really, because families sang it.
I’m used to music as a tool, taking the various elements and then making something completely new out of them. And writing film music is the perfect opportunity to do that, because you can look at the film and then just let your imagination soar.
When I was little, 4 or 5 years old, the first guitar I had was given to me by a blacklisted violinist – a lefty, commie guy, pinko man.
It’s crazy to make records nobody buys. It’s just a waste of time.
The thing I always found about the gospel music was that it reached further into your being if you like, your mind. It takes hold of you – especially if you sing it and play it.
I didn’t want tunes that preach heaven: you know, life on Earth is bad and heaven is the only hope we have. I don’t quite care for that. I mean, when people sing that stuff, it’s good when they do it, but I didn’t want to do it.
I like classical music. I especially like the French composers: Ravel in particular. Debussy. That’s so soothing in a nervous world.
American global economic imperialism is a fact. It’s a known fact. It’s a simple fact.
I’ve tended to look at my albums as research and development. I was just trying to get someplace new on each one.
The ’50s was the golden age of music all over the world for some crazy, ‘X-File’-like reason I can’t quite understand.
I used to sneak gospel tunes into my old records, just as kind of a personal thing.
Santa Monica, where I have always lived, is not a town where you will find storefront Church of God in Christ churches. So, the whole idea of gospel quartet singing is something I never knew existed until I began to hear it on record.
Film work is a job I like to do because I really love to solve problems.
Chavez Ravine is the dawn of Chicano consciousness.
I keep my mind on track, and I don’t get mad, and I don’t get frustrated. Well, I do… but creative work, it’s a way of controlling all that.
If you’re white working with non-white people, you will be branded as a colonialist by some people, regardless of your efforts or intentions.
To me, the essence of the music is the most important thing.
Music is a treasure hunt. You dig and dig, and sometimes you find something.
I think I’m more relaxed; I think I’m more philosophical. I don’t get worried as much as I used to about things.
I toured around for years, but the road was always a drag for me. I never made a dime. In fact, I lost a lot of money – it was horrible.
With country, it’s hard to penetrate the thick layers of commercialism that have been applied like shellac coatings over the real thing.
Promoters don’t book you ’cause they like you; they do it ’cause there’s good business to be done.
People who love the applause should have it, but I don’t care for it.
I love listening to gospel records.
The ocean is very comfortable. I could never live inland.
Music is fragile: people die, and it’s forgotten.
It all started back in ’69 when I worked with Jack Nitzche on ‘Performance.’ That was my first experience of doing soundtracks, and I’ve enjoyed doing them ever since.
If every song is in the past tense, that’s a drag, so you have to predict the future.
What kills music in films is when it’s done as performance, drawing attention to the fact that someone’s in the background playing it.
I had a lot of luck in meeting great musicians who were kind enough to show me things.
You go through these phases. That’s how life is. Over the long term, you just can’t do one thing. I saw that back in the Sixties when I was getting started.
When I made the first album, I was 24, and at that age, you have nothing to say. I just played the music I loved and tried to do it justice.
I always thought East L.A. music was so dreamy and languid and kinda greasy.
I hate films. Films make me sick now, and if something makes me sick, I always back off.
Some people have career plans, long-range career plans. I don’t know anything about that. I’m no good at it.
Beautiful tunes are all very good and fine, and great musicians are always great, but that alone isn’t enough. Most folks, when they see movies or hear records, need something that they find pulls them in, draws them in, and appeals to them beyond just the notes.
Having my son on drums has made a huge difference. I can’t stress this strongly enough, in terms of the groove space and style that Joachim gave me to instinctively play what I felt in a more free way, rather than feeling constricted. That’s true on record and on stage.
People who aren’t as interested in recorded music as they used to be will say, ‘Oh, ‘Buena Vista?’ Loved it.’ And I’ll say, ‘Well, how about any of my other recent records. I’ve been doing some pretty good ones. You like those?’ And they go, ‘Huh?’
I’m not interested in making folkloric records, but I like to push the traditional format around so that familiar patterns get knocked on the head.
I don’t like being watched, and I don’t like being an entertainer.
I’m sort of an osmotic fellow.
‘Geronimo’ was a huge amount of work. That involved 80-piece orchestras and Indians and Tuvans and all kinds of crazy people on that thing. That’s a real circus, that score.
If you’re taught to hate and fear a people or a country, and it works, it’s because of your ignorance of that country. You have no contact with it, nor do you know what you’re hating and fearing.
When the real world intrudes on your musical fantasies, I get put out.
