Robbie Robertson

“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.”

“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.'”

“Some music is supposed to be disposable; that's OK. A lot of music is fun for today, but it isn't supposed to be timeless; it's supposed to be trendy.”

“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.”

“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?”

“I think the world of Chuck Berry.”

“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.”

“You never know what could be interesting tomorrow.”

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

“One of the greatest live recordings, I think, in the history of the world is Ray Charles in Atlanta... And they didn't even have a big mobile recording thing set up. The word on the street was they only had like two microphones, one for the band and one for him. Perfect recordings. I think it's mono.”

“Think about the number of people who do film music, make records and have a Native American heritage - and I may be the only one on the list.”

“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.”

“There's something so healthy about young people speaking up in unity.”

“Musical revolutions, I don't know how many I've been through.”

“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.”

“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.'”

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

“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.”

“Music should never be harmless.”

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