Richie Havens Quotations

Woodstock happened in August 1969, long before the Internet and mobile phones made it possible to communicate instantly with anyone, anywhere. It was a time when we werent able to witness world events or the horrors of war live on 24-hour news channels.

I opened the Woodstock Festival even though I was supposed to be fifth. I said, 'What am I doing here? No, no, not me, not first!' I had to go on stage because there was no one else to go on first - the concert was already two-and-a-half hours late.

Though it's frequently portrayed as this crazy, unbridled festival of rain-soaked, stoned hippies dancing in the mud, Woodstock was obviously much more than that - or we wouldn't still be talking about it in 2009. People of all ages and colors came together in the fields of Max Yasgur's farm.

Woodstock was both a peaceful protest and a global celebration.

I haven't seen my face since I started growing my beard, which was when I was a teenager, almost; I never shaved. So I don't really know what I look like.

I started out by myself, but it eventually turned into a trio by the mid-'60s - a conga drum and another guitarist. And that's been mostly what I've worked with most of the time.

Everything I want to do, and to accomplish, is on the other side of the universe. That's peace of mind, energy, freedom. And I'm making myself ready to go, joyfully and willingly. I think I'm ready to be everybody's friend, and to do anything for anybody. It's heavy.

Many times, people have come up to me after singing some songs, and they'd say, 'Richie, do you know what you did?' And I'd say, 'What?' And they'd go, 'I wrote these songs down for you to sing, and you sang them all in a row.' But that's the kind of communication that happens, you know.

Music is the major form of communication. It's the commonest vibration, the people's news broadcast, especially for kids.

My right wrist is connected to the left foot. You know, if the left foot doesn't work, the right wrist doesn't work, and that's really the truth.

I believe I inherited my sense of music from my father. My father was an ear piano player; he could just hear something and play it.

I don't get sick. I can't afford to get sick.

I really sing songs that move me. I'm not in show business. I'm in the communications business. That's what it's for me.

Live Aid was a baby Woodstock, a child of Woodstock, which I call Globalstock.

I saw the Village as a place you could escape to, to express yourself. When I first went there, I wrote and performed poetry. Then I drew portraits for a couple of years. It took a while before I thought about picking up a guitar.

I came up in Brooklyn singing doo-wop music from the time I was 13 to the time I was 20. That music served a purpose of keeping a lot of people out of trouble, and also it was a passport from one neighborhood to another.

We had been reading about these beatniks who hung out or lived in Greenwich Village, and we wanted to find out what a 'beatnik' was, and so a friend and I went right to the source. What we learned, of course, was that beatniks were mostly artists.

My mother's family came from the British West Indies. And my father's family came from, well, my father's father came from the Montana/South Dakota area. They were Blackfoot Indian.

The direction for my music is heaven, of course. We gear all things to the realm of heaven - which is the mind, the organized mind.

I eat once a day if I remember, and I try never to go to sleep.

I actually grew up with people from all over the world. There wasn't enough of a difference to feel different from anybody else. Their grandmother hollered at me like my grandmother hollered at all the kids when anybody did anything wrong. And their parents did the same thing.

I remember the first time I was booked into a jazz club. I was scared to death. I'm not a jazz artist. So I got to the club and spotted this big poster saying, 'Richie Havens, folk jazz artist.' Then I'd go to a rock club and I'm billed as a 'folk rock performer' and in the blues clubs I'd be a 'folk blues entertainer.'

I believe we have a double in every country. There's something about that that is probably a commonness that we don't make note of. That maybe there's only a cast for so many faces, and we live everywhere.

I must have played every college and university at least three times, and that goes for most of the clubs. I'd be on the road six days a week, go home and change bags, and then be gone for another six days.

You can't even kill yourself if it isn't your time to go. People have no control whatsoever over what happens to them, and they are beginning to realize this. The future lies in the time of living. Your doing something will get you into tomorrow, if you want to call it tomorrow. If you want to make those distinctions at all.

Go around the middleman; get your music straight to the people, ... You've got the Web now. Do it. Don't even hesitate. Because people want to hear real music, and there's a lot of talented kids out there, millions of them as far as I'm concerned, and they really have something to say. And they just needed their medium, and now they have it. That's what I tell them. Go to the Web ... but do it.

When I flew over the crowd, that's what I said to myself, ... I said, 'If they put this picture in the newspaper, it's all over for them, because now they can't hide us anymore .'

It's a brand new world, and it's just beginning again, but on such a wonderful level of being able to communicate with each other directly, being able to talk to people all over the world,

I told him, 'You don't need to get gigs from the union. You can make your own band,' ... That's how he did it. He went down to the coffeehouse I told him to go to. A month later, I'm around the corner at another cafe. Friend of mine comes up and says, 'You gotta hear this band! This guy was great!' And I went around the corner and went, 'It's him! It's that guy!' He was so magical.

It's the first time that the original people were invited back to play, ... They're doing it right. It's going to be a wonderful 30th anniversary and reunion. I'm looking forward to it.

In the last two years, the youngest people are asking me for the oldest songs, ... I'm talking kids . It blows my mind. I look at them and go, 'How could you have heard that song? I haven't sung it in 20 years.' It's like I'm just starting now. I finally got a career.

You've got to go down to the Village. That's where it's happening.

When I write a song today, basically it goes on the stage tomorrow. That's the way it works. You cannont interrupt your consciousness; it all comes from the subconscious, it can happen anywhere. It could be in a telephone booth.

I tended to listen to doo-wop, but my grandmother would always have the radio on all day and she'd start with Yiddish and then move on to gospel and later to "make believe" ballroom music. I got to hear all kinds of music and my mother would get up to go to work listening to country music. That was her alarm clock. My dad was a jazz lover and listened to the man who wrote "Misty", Errol Garner. He loved piano players, so I got to listen to that as well.

Nothing has really changed. We had bootleg albums in the '60s and today we have Internet file sharing. They just found a better way to do it -- get music for free. What's great about today is an artist has an opportunity to go direct to their audience without dealing with a middleman. People can go directly to the web for CDs, DVDs and downloads. I think that's the best thing that's happened, that people's music is being flashed around the world.

Richie is the only one of my nine who's really moved away. I can't get rid of most of them.

I'm not in show business; I'm in the communications business. That's what it's about for me.

Woodstock was not about sex, drugs, and rock and roll. It was about spirituality, about love, about sharing, about helping each other, living in peace and harmony.