Robbie Robertson Band Quotations

One of the things I feel very strong about is the achievement of the Band really being a complete band.

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.

The Beatles tried to do some tours and found it to be completely pointless and became a non-touring band after that, and with very good reason.

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.

The previous collections that have been done on The Band were OK,

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.

Some bands today have the experience of really working together and honing their craft. And other bands are very much like, 'I just got a guitar for Christmas, let's start a band.' And you can hear the difference.

One of the greatest live recordings, I think, in the history of the world is Ray Charles in Atlanta... And they didn't even have a big mobile recording thing set up. The word on the street was they only had like two microphones, one for the band and one for him. Perfect recordings. I think it's mono.