Robbie Robertson Quotes

Punk's influence on music, movies, art, design and fashion is no longer in doubt. It is used as the measurement for what is cool.

I was an absolute idiot, wearing polo-necks, reading Kerouac, watching Woody Allen movies, and jazz fitted right into all of that. My interest in that whole world became very genuine, but perhaps started off a bit affected - a mixture of right and wrong reasons. I was always drawn to non-commercial music, perhaps pathologically so.

I actually got into music because of art and because of skateboarding: All those graphics and punk bands and fanzines - they were glued together in my brain.

In the old days, maybe we'd come across Captain Beefheart, buy a record, go, 'This is great!' and notice how his music is evolving, changing, and becoming more complex, more radical. And we would follow that progression and see it reflected in the alternative culture it came from.

. . . rock and roll, as I see it, is the ultimate populist art form, democracy in action, because it's true: anybody can do it.

I've embraced rock 'n' roll because it encompasses all the things I'm interested in: poetry, revolution, sexuality, political activism - all of these things can be found in rock 'n' roll. But I am also engaged in all of these things separately.

In the sixties, everyone you knew became famous. My flatmate was Terence Stamp. My barber was Vidal Sassoon. David Hockney did the menu in a restaurant I went to. I didn't know anyone unknown who didn't become famous.

Parallels between classical and pop are not new. The whole San Francisco movement of John Cage and Terry Riley went hand in glove with what the Velvet Underground were doing.

Sex and drugs and rock and roll.

In music, you feel a connection to the voice and think about the person behind it. In art that's secondary.

I'm sort of like Jean-Paul Goude, the graphic designer who used to style Grace Jones and shoot all her visuals, just meaning that I use all mediums in one - music, fashion, and art. I'm hitting it from all angles.

I really want to do a book on the history of the no-wave music scene in New York, how it extended out and formed lots of other things. It was such a great visual culture.

The music I listened to as a kid - the Stones, the Beatles - that was so rebellious at the time, it became mainstream.

Anything you can do to express yourself is a form of art. That's why I love my craft so much. I always wanted to play other artists. If I can't play an instrument, then I want to play a character that can. There is an artist behind everything, and I think that's beautiful.

It's really hard to imagine there ever being the kind of impact there was when punk rock happened in the late 70's. I wish there would be one big change like that again, but I don't know if that'll ever happen.

Jimi Hendrix's music was escapism.

That's what drew me to rock music in the first place - that sense of remaking the world on your own terms.

The Haight is just a place; the '60s was a spirit.

I can't think of any musician or producer who has influenced me more than Brian Eno. From when he was in Roxy Music, producing Devo, the Talking Heads and My Life in the Bush of Ghosts.

Back in Chicago, all we cared about was rock 'n' roll and staying out of the army.

Rock 'n' roll was two pegs below being a prisoner of war back then.

To be in a band, at least according to the rules of rock in the 1970s, one must know how to play an instrument. But rather than waste time solving that problem, No Wavers ignored it. The point was simply to make music, not to learn how first.

When Soundgarden formed, we were post-punk - pretty quirky.

Rock is young music, it is youth oriented. It just speaks for a generation.

I am into drones and one chord freak outs and the paintings I am into are more minimal things the New York colour field painters and the soviet schools of the early/mid 20th century suprematism and constructionism.