Anytime I switch to another instrument, I immediately turn it into another kind of drum so that I can understand it better.
By the time The Band did The Last Waltz, the chemistry had changed, and it wasn’t a thrill anymore to live that studio kind of life.
When the second record came out, they started calling it The Band. I voted to call it The Crackers. I’m no fool.
I was in high school, trying to get out of high school. The only thing slowing me up was grades.
Good times don’t last long sometimes.
The rock star stuff never came up for us. The Band was never attacked by groupies before, during or after any show that we ever played.
I like walking on the edge.
I never subscribe to the stay-at-home policy. I’m not sick of the road or sick of eating in good restaurants around the country. I like to travel.
I love horns, and the bigger the band, the better it sounds to my ear.
Drums usually seem to tune themselves.
I like to get within handshaking distance of the crowd. If it happens, they know it, we know it, and that’s all we came here for.
You can either make it come around or you can’t. By the time we would be ready to record a song, we would know for sure that it was the best way we could do it.
The Jungle Bush Beaters didn’t last too long as a group, but we had a pretty good time while we did.
If you feel like you’re getting into a rut with a song, a night off usually fixes it.
I don’t think I’m a millionaire, but I’m comfortable.
I’ve had all the lessons I could get. I’ve learned from everybody I’ve ever met.
My dad and I played music. He teaches me a song or two every time I’m home.
My parents wanted me to be smart and be a scholar, and the best I could do was graduate high school.
If things are going slow, I’m itchy.
The sound of the blues, rhythm and blues, country music, is what we lived for, black and white alike. It gave you strength to sit on one of those throbbing Allis-Chalmers tractors all day if you knew you were gonna hear something on the radio or maybe see a show that evening.
For me personally, though, the killer was published in Rolling Stone: “Levon Helm is the only drummer that can make you cry.