Robbie Robertson Quotes

I ended up gettin' a little Gibson amp and a bass, because of Gene Simmons of Kiss. Myself and three other kids would pretend to be Kiss - I liked Gene the best.

Hopefully I'm bringing to rock n' roll the kind of spontaneity that I love, and always believed rock and roll stands for.

Rock music is electronic music, dependent entirely on electronic circuitry and amplification.

Pete Townshend used to crash chords and let the guitar feed back. He's overrated.

Guys like Otis Blackwell and Bobby Darin, and all the guys who were writing songs for Elvis at the time, just hanging around, writing songs, talking about music.

I'm not trying to overcome my father or fill his shoes or reach any kind of level that he did. We're talking about a Mozart of rock music.

I've been called 'the father of loud.'

I would love to interview Dave Grohl. I just think he's an amazing musician, and I grew up listening to Nirvana, so I have so many questions about that.

In the '90s, guitar solos were dead.

I've always played every amp I've ever had full up, because rock and roll is supposed to be played loud. Also, that's how you get your sustain.

I think that there's always great music being made. Always has been, always will be.

When I was 13, I was just figuring out how to play 'Eruption,' poorly, by Eddie Van Halen.

I don't feel that all the great songs have been written. I do feel that where we are now, certainly with rock & roll music, is that so much of it is variations on themes. But I think that it's one's particular creativity and individuality that comes out within that variation on a particular theme that makes a song great.

I'm always trying to emulate guitar. Especially when I'm playing the trombone, that's what I think about. Like, I listen to guitar players every day: Warren Haynes, Lenny Kravitz, Prince, different people. And I'm always trying to find out a way how I can get my trombone to sound like that.

It was amazing for me growing up in the musical decade of the '60s. I saw The Beatles on television and went out and bought an electric guitar.

What we admit to is being a rock n' roll band. From day one, I was a big Chuck Berry fan.

Hendrix was a perfect guitarist. And that's all I wanted to do as a kid. Play a guitar properly and jump around.

The Rolling Stones... The Rolling Stones have a reflection to my music; I wouldn't deny it. I think that's honest.

What Jimmy Page did was pretty inspiring for guitar players. He married a lot of acoustic elements into hard rock. The kind of chords he used were very left of center, with a lot of dissonance - I absorbed that like a sponge. It's all over the music I write, always.

As a young man growing up in that era, I was very influenced by Hendrix and took to a wah wah, and I learned how to really use one effectively as Hendrix did.

A guitar can be so human, so sorrowful, so angry, and I wanted to figure out how to achieve that vibe without having to actually use guitars, because 'Badlands' is a very futuristic record - and making it that in an era of futuristic music is a really hard thing to do!

If it wasn't for guys like Gary Moore, I wouldn't exist. He not only proved that the blues could rock but it could draw a crowd as well. All of which made a huge impression on me.

I was interested in music since I was 14 years old. What really got me started was the first Led Zeppelin album... absolutely.

I'd always envisioned 'The Big Beat' leading off 'The Tale of the Tape' with the biggest drumbeat the rock world had ever heard. I knew I had something good… but I had no idea just how good.

Rock 'n' roll guitar came from blues guitar. It was the blues guys who first turned the amp up and started whacking on the Stratocaster and a Les Paul. It wasn't the country guys and it wasn't the white guys; it was the Blues guys. That's where the real fire is in all of this rock and roll music.