Time is not kind to everything.
— Robbie Robertson
Chuck Berry told me if it wasn't for Louis Jordan, he wouldn't have probably ever even got into music. That Louis Jordan changed everything and made him want to become a musician.
Bob Dylan is as influential as any artist that there has been.
The kid at 9 or 10 who knows who Billie Holiday is... that's the coolest thing ever.
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.
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.
I really have to feel a sense of freedom in my storytelling.
I'm not an activist.
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.
People go through periods when things are dark and cloudy, and they talk dark and cloudy.
There's something so healthy about young people speaking up in unity.
I could never be a movie star and get up at 7:30 to be at someone else's studio.
I like to work on records when I feel inspired, not because it's expected of me.
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 want to be one of those people saying, 'Remember when things were better?'
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.
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.
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.
Some people love some music, and they hear it a year later and they think, 'What was I thinking?'
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.
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.
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.
I think, some countries, you have to be dead to have your picture on a stamp.
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.
To find a new star in the sky is pretty hard.
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.
You never know what could be interesting tomorrow.
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 never really had a teenage experience. I went from childhood to maturity, and in some ways, it short-circuited me emotionally.
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.
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.
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.
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?
When I was playing with Bob Dylan in, like, 1966, I was, like, 20 years old.
I think that there's always great music being made. Always has been, always will be.
I'm always optimistic.
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.
Working on 'The Last Waltz' introduced me to Martin Scorsese, and I had been a movie bug since I was a young kid.
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.
In Americana, the facts and the dreams seem to be all the same to me.
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.
It's extraordinary that revolutions taking place around the world were sparked by communication on the Internet.
Musical revolutions, I don't know how many I've been through.
My mother is extraordinary. She understood me and never tried to hold me back.
I admire those old road dogs, Willie Nelson, Bob Dylan. That's their life.
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.
The road has taken a lot of the great ones: Hank Williams, Buddy Holly, Otis Redding, Janis, Jimi Hendrix, Elvis.
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.'
