Earlier this year, when musician Robbie Robertson passed away, the world lost a link to one of the greatest eras in rock ever. Robertson, a guitar player and songwriter for the iconic group The Band, played with Bob Dylan, wrote legendary songs like “The Weight” and impacted generations.
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Robertson had a lot to say about his music, storytelling, and his philosophies. Below we have compiled a list of his thoughts on everything from his mom and his teenage years to skinwalkers.
[RELATED: Bob Dylan Pays Tribute to “Lifelong Friend” Robbie Robertson]
1. “You never know what could be interesting tomorrow.”
2. “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.”
3. “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.”
4. “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.”
5. “My mother is extraordinary. She understood me and never tried to hold me back.”
6. “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.”
7. “I like to work on records when I feel inspired, not because it’s expected of me.”
8. “I could never be a movie star and get up at 7:30 to be at someone else’s studio.”
9. “I never really had a teenage experience. I went from childhood to maturity, and in some ways, it short-circuited me emotionally.”
10. “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.”
11. “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.”
12. “You don’t stumble upon your heritage. It’s there, just waiting to be explored and shared.”
13. “Music should never be harmless.”
14. “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.”
15. “It’s a bit of a sore spot, the Thanksgiving in Indian country.”
16. “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.”
17. “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.
18. “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.”
19. “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.”
20. “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.”
21. “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.”
22. “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.”
23. “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.”
24. “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.”
25. “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.”
Photo by Newsmakers
