Robbie Robertson

After the music is over it’s gone in the air. You can never capture it again.

I can’t understand guys who just have to have your autograph. What do you do when you get home, take it out and look at it?

Even if people don’t understand the language that you’re singing in, they still know good music when they hear it.

My first relationship to any kind of musical situation is as a listener.

To this day, no one has come up with a set of rules for originality. There aren’t any.

I like to sleep. There is no set time of day for sleep. You sleep when you’re tired and that’s all there is to it.

I stole everything I ever heard, but mostly I stole from the horns.

I’m just trying to create context for me to improve my musicianship.

There’s nobody plays like me and I don’t play like anybody else.

The music field was the first to break down racial barriers, because in order to play together, you have to love the people you are playing with, and if you have any racial inhibitions, you wouldn’t be able to do that.

I don’t really get nervous, I prepare. When the music messed up in the beginning, it tapped into my nerves and when you’re nervous and vulnerable, something special and something different can happen.

Music gives us a lot of things and it only wants one thing back… your attention.

Music making is the most joyful activity possible, the most perfect expression of any emotion.

If you listen to Donny Hathaway, he had a lot of jazz elements in the way he sang, … For me, the two styles borrow from each other so much that sometimes it’s hard for me to make a distinction. When you hear Lalah sing the combination, that’s when she really shines – when she’s allowed to dip into her jazz when she wants to and then get soulful and do the R ‘n’ B thing.

Miles’ sessions were not typical of anybody else’s sessions. They were totally unique.