A biography for Robbie Robertsonhasn’t been written yet.
“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.'”
“My mother is extraordinary. She understood me and never tried to hold me back.”
“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.”
“Sixteen years on the road is long enough. Twenty years is unthinkable.”
“In a lot of groups, you can change a musician, and it doesn't mean anything.”
“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.'”
“The Band is probably the ultimate example of people taking all kinds of music, from gospel to blues to mountain music to folk music to on and on and on and on and putting them all in this big pot and mixing up a new gumbo.”
“I never really had a teenage experience. I went from childhood to maturity, and in some ways, it short-circuited me emotionally.”