Robbie Robertson

The Band is probably the ultimate example of people taking all kinds of music, from gospel ...
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Sixteen years on the road is long enough. Twenty years is unthinkable.

I'm not an activist.

The kid at 9 or 10 who knows who Billie Holiday is... that's the coolest thing ...
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My thirst for knowledge and experience comes from the idea that once you learned something, it ...
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A lot of times when you're making a record, you put your head down and charge forward until you're done. You just hope that the ideas hold up, because you're kind of lost in your own storm.

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.'

After the 'Last Waltz' concert, it just seemed very healthy to me to put making a record as far out of my mind as I possibly could.

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

Boy, do I got some stories to tell.

Do you know what a skin walker is? It's a thing in Indian mythology. There are certain people born with this gift, and they're able to actually get inside you and mess with your feelings and with your mind. And if a skin walker chooses to get a hold of you, there's not much you can do.

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

For years after 'The Last Waltz,' I got all kinds of silly movie offers - or, maybe, not silly, but parts that are not my calling... lots of offers to play some wonderful boyfriend.

Everybody grows in their own way.

I am fascinated by the places that music comes from, like fife-and-drum blues from southern Mississippi or Cajun music out of Lafayette, Louisiana, shape-note singing, old harp singing from the mountains - I love that stuff. It's like the beginning of rock and roll: something comes down from the hills, and something comes up from the delta.

I always like to keep one hand in the tepee and the other hand in the synagogue. Wouldn't it be great if there was a combination of the two? You could go to synagogue, and it would be really hot in there.

I admire those old road dogs, Willie Nelson, Bob Dylan. That's their life.

I come from a family who prided themselves, both sides, on memory. And I was told growing up, constantly, that I was born with a really good memory.

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.'

I don't like overt traditionalism.

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.

I could never be a movie star and get up at 7:30 to be at someone else's studio.

I feel so lucky to have been in a group where it was a real band. This wasn't a singer and guitar player and some other guys.

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

I like to work on records when I feel inspired, not because it's expected of me.

I haven't been to many music events where somebody was performing and it actually made me cry.

I never really had a teenage experience. I went from childhood to maturity, and in some ways, it short-circuited me emotionally.

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.

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.'

I really have to feel a sense of freedom in my storytelling.

I play guitar quite a bit, because I'm always in search of something. I don't play to jam, but because I'm fishing. I'm looking for something, that I hope you can never find. If I do find it, I'm afraid I won't have a need to do this any more.

I think the world of Chuck Berry.

I saw Ray Charles at Massey Hall.

I remember from my earliest years people speaking, you know, in a certain kind of rhythm and telling stories and sharing experiences in a way that was different in Indian country than it was other places. And I was really struck by this and obviously very affected by it, because it's always come out in my songs.

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

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'm not an activist.

If I can play one note and make you cry, then that's better than those fancy dancers playing twenty notes.

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.

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

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

It's extraordinary that revolutions taking place around the world were sparked by communication on the Internet.

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

It's a bit of a sore spot, the Thanksgiving in Indian country.

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'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've always been in love with that Delta-flavored music... the music that came from Mississippi and Memphis and, especially, New Orleans. When I was 14, I was in a wanna-be New Orleans band in Toronto.

Music should never be harmless.

Music isn't necessarily made to last, and there's always been disposable music.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.'

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

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

Sixteen years on the road is long enough. Twenty years is unthinkable.

Record making is an extraordinary experience.

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

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.

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 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.

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.

The native music of North America, the original-roots music of this country, is also the underworld music of this country.

The kid at 9 or 10 who knows who Billie Holiday is... that's the coolest thing ever.

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

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

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.

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

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.

When I was 14 years old, I had the opportunity to meet Buddy Holly. I asked him how he got that big, powerful sound out of his guitar amp. He said, 'I blew a speaker and decided not to get it fixed.'

We need to have a taste factor in our life. It isn't about what's popular, it's about what's really good.

To find a new star in the sky is pretty hard.

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.

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.

You never know what could be interesting tomorrow.

You don't stumble upon your heritage. It's there, just waiting to be explored and shared.

Working on 'The Last Waltz' introduced me to Martin Scorsese, and I had been a movie bug since I was a young kid.