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.
BONNIE RAITTI didn’t have to be a pop singer with a certain look. When I started, there was really a revolution in natural artists with blues and folk artists crossing over; otherwise, I wouldn’t have been able to get started.
More Bonnie Raitt Quotes
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There were so many great music and political scenes going on in the late ’60s in Cambridge. The ratio of guys to girls at Harvard was four to one, so all of those things were playing in my mind.
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The one thing I know is that if you’re not paying attention, it will come back to bite you.
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I 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.
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I’m proud of the way I rearrange and put things together, like a chef who makes a great meal, or a filmmaker who puts together a story – it’s casting, editing, cinematography.
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The experiences of life make all your emotions, I think, deeper.
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The anti-nuke movement has important and far-reaching implications for grassroots organizing.
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It’s incredible to see labor unions and environmentalists getting together to stop the corporate mentality that destroys both jobs and the environment.
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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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With slide guitar, you’re just hanging this piece of glass on your hand. It’s a really beautiful instrument in that it’s so responsive, you’re just slipping your hand back and forth.
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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.
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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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It is still a surprise when people tell me that I’ve had an influence on them, particularly when it’s someone I really respect.
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I don’t want to sound like a self-help book, but it really has been transformative for me to take a look at my relationships in a new way and see my part in them. Everybody’s going through that.
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I thought I had to live that partying lifestyle in order to be authentic, but in fact if you keep it up too long, all you’re going to be is sloppy or dead.
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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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My parents would drag me out to perform for my family, like all parents do, but it was a hobby – nothing more.
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The generation I grew up in was the beginning of “stand up for yourself,” whether being a singer-songwriter or a feminist. In my college years, the feminist movement was really coming to fore, so we wouldn’t have put up with guys treating us less than equal.
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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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There would be no rock and roll or rhythm and blues without Leo Fenders’ contribution … the tone is everything
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I didn’t have to be a pop singer with a certain look. When I started, there was really a revolution in natural artists with blues and folk artists crossing over; otherwise, I wouldn’t have been able to get started.
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You know, a lot of people feel that sobriety is about just stopping using whatever it was that you appeared to be addicted to, but it really has to do with a way of looking at your life and taking accountability.
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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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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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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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Leading a band and producing yourself and picking cool tunes and putting a show together takes a lot of thought, and a certain amount of courage.
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I finally learned to accept that I can’t make radio play blues any more than I could get Reagan out of the White House.
BONNIE RAITT