I’m sure I would have been considered a more significant artist if I was a singer-songwriter. It’s just not the way I roll. I love being a curator and a musicologist.
BONNIE RAITTI don’t want to discredit people’s opinions of me, but you talk about the violin or the cello or lead guitar where you have to learn tons of chords, that’s much more difficult.
More Bonnie Raitt Quotes
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I’m one of those people who just doesn’t plan my personal life. I plan my professional life.
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Pat Benatar might need a rock band, but I can just sit with a blues guitar for an hour and a half and do folk songs and great contemporary ballads, and not many people can pull that off.
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We did a two month tour with Taj Mahal that was really healing and cathartic and a good distraction after my brother passed away. Then I knew I wanted to take a year off, and it was really nice to have that chance to fall apart.
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Even if the writers don’t get paid enough most of the time, unfortunately – but there’s never been a more amazing flow of information on all of the issues. I would love to see a revival of what we had against the war in the ’60s – we could do thes
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Elvis might have compromised his musical style a bit towards the end, but that doesn’t mean that artists from the rock n’ roll/folk-roots culture – of which he was not really a part – shouldn’t get better as they get older, like the great jazz or blues artists.
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The consolidation of the music business has made it difficult to encourage styles like the blues, all of which deserve to be celebrated as part of our most treasured national resources.
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I don’t think there’s ever been any music quite like what we came up with.
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Really important issues are getting lost, so I can say I’m glad to be a citizen of the planet and do my part.
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The fact is that this conversation is going on at every level at every age, we’re all going, “God, what a jerk I’ve been,” “How could I have married that guy?” or “How could I have done this or that?” With time, this is the gift of being older, that you get to look back and say, “It wasn’t all about them.”
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Jazz and blues fests are everywhere now, and Americana is going strong on college radio. What I’m hearing is an appreciation of real music.
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With the new ways of getting music out, you don’t need a label if you’re a legacy artist.
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Whatever role we were in our family of birth, we take on this persona and in your 20s and 30s in particular, you end up thinking that’s you and that isn’t necessarily you.
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I grew up in Los Angeles in a Quaker family, and for me being Quaker was a political calling rather than a religious one.
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People write me letters and thank me for turning them on to Fred McDowell and Sippie Wallace, and that’s partly my job this time around.
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Life gets mighty precious when there’s less of it to waste.
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Sometimes I’m more true when I’m up onstage than I’m able to be in my regular life. It’s not as exciting to be at home, but I’ve got to learn how to make that work, and then I will be an ordinary woman.
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It can unite kids and musicians, everybody, whether they’re leftist or rightist, or radical, or Republican, because energy is energy. But in fact, it is a real political struggle – it shows people that it’s big business against the people.
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I’m glad I get singled out for my slide guitar-playing, which isn’t that difficult to do. I didn’t take guitar lessons, but I just love the way it sounds, almost like the human voice.
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We can choose, you know, we ain’t no amoeba.
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How I measure success is getting to make another record and being able to the come back to the same town and play again cause you sold out the last time.
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I like to think I get better with age, but maybe absence makes the heart grow fonder.
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Thank God for Occupy and thank God for ‘The Daily Show,’ Colbert and the rising up that’s going on around the world.
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You don’t have to look a certain way to have a hit record.
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In my early twenties, if I wasn’t getting good enough at it, then people would not come and see me. Anybody who has lasted this long – I hope we get better with age.
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The anti-nuke movement has important and far-reaching implications for grassroots organizing.
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The women’s movement resurgence of standing up for so many things that were kind of sleepy there for a decade or so, there’s been a reawakening and I think the consciousness movement in general is dovetailing with a lot of recovery and self-empowerment.
BONNIE RAITT