Levon Helm Quotes

John Mayer would be my ultimate collaboration because he's just the man. He has basically captured all I believe in with music.

My father Apresh Lahiri and mother Bansari Lahiri were great composers of their time.

I remember Prince gave me a cassette of Purple Rain. It was like 20 minutes long and he asked me to write something on it. I tried for a month and then he came to L.A. I went to see him and said, "I can't do it. It's too perfect. It's like 'Stairway to Heaven.'" He said OK and then I go, "I can keep the cassette, right?" He said, "Of course and thank you for trying."

He saw us play a few times in fact. I did this song called I Can't Keep From Crying Sometimes, and Jimi loved it. He paid me a huge compliment when he told me that he was thinking of doing something similar himself!

Whoever hired me might've just heard 'Refugee.' Well, I'm not the secret to 'Refugee.' The secret to 'Refugee' is the song. But if somebody really good calls me up to play on something because they like the way I played on 'Refugee,' then I wind up playing on another really good song.

I've always been the first to admit that Jimi was a very big influence on my early stuff.

I didn't write any music at all, and then, I remember Jon Anderson being very insistent saying that there were two kinds of musicians: the ones who wrote music and the ones who didn't.

It is tough to say what has influenced me the most because I know that Mozart makes me think better, but you cannot beat Dave Matthews for feeling good!

I knew when I got to play with Al Jackson I would be a better bass player because he was the best drummer in the world. I worshipped him.

There were times I thought I was going to turn to the blues, but then I'd hear better blues players.

I wrote music. I was in a hardcore band when I was 14, and I wasn't good enough to play anyone else's songs, so I had to write my own.

My family is very creative. My grandfather played the guitar in Cuba. My sisters, my mom and two aunts would do harmonies, so I would see them and think, 'I want the attention.'

I take my hat off to people like the Stones, but it's not for me. I couldn't do that. Jagger is brilliant and long may he rock. I couldn't make my career out of old songs; it would do my head in.

We worked very hard to make the lyrics suit the music. I can't, like Elton John, for example, compose by lyrics. Elton has a great talent for that. Whatever you give him, including your questions, he composes in half an hour and makes a great song out of it.

I started off as a kid singing with my dad. My dad was my best pal. But he had seven kids, and I was the only one who was kind of interested in what he was playing and singing at the piano. And he was not only my dad, but he was my best pal, and I was interested in doing whatever he wanted to.

There was something about Hank Williams, Jr. that I really latched onto from an early age.

I remember my brother came home with a bass and played a blues solo on it. I just went insane for days afterwards learning that.

My dad had his own business and was extremely busy, but on a very rare occasion, he would play guitar and sing a bit. I was always fascinated by it. I wrote my first song in first grade because my dad was making songs up during those special moments, and it seemed like a fun thing to try myself.

My old man Shorty was a huge figure in my musical life.

I get the biggest kick out of it, to hear words that I wrote and chords that I wrote being sung by somebody else.

My older brother was the guitar player in the neighborhood band. My parents were the cool ones that had the basement for rehearsal. Rather than hang with my peers after school, I wanted to just listen to the band. More than that, I wanted to play.

We all grew up idolizing another musician. That's how this works. That's how music is created.

I come to America because if you're a rock 'n' roll musician you should come here every chance you get.

I'm not saying I'm even half as talented or a quarter as talented as any of the people I'm inspired by, but if I hear a beat Busta Rhymes would absolutely kill, I'll use my voice to do a flow similar to his.

I don't think I've ever met a drummer who didn't tell me that my dad was an influence. He's a tough act to follow.