Top 125 Quotes & Sayings by Ry Cooder
Explore popular quotes and sayings by an American musician Ry Cooder.
Last updated on December 23, 2024.
I'm not interested in making folkloric records, but I like to push the traditional format around so that familiar patterns get knocked on the head.
All I know is, I play the guitar, beat it out, and sing a song that has some damn resonance that we feel as musicians. We send it out and people get it, and that's a good thing.
People have all sorts of expectations which you can't meet. Me, I'm so reclusive I stay away from such things as much as I can. I never go anywhere.
It all started back in '69 when I worked with Jack Nitzche on 'Performance.' That was my first experience of doing soundtracks, and I've enjoyed doing them ever since.
I'm sort of an osmotic fellow.
I don't understand the public, but I do believe the public is oversold and underrated every day. Give the people something interesting, something to chew on, I say.
What kills music in films is when it's done as performance, drawing attention to the fact that someone's in the background playing it.
I've been wanting an ice cream truck forever.
That's what records do: represent a compressed, heightened version of the sound. Because of the compression of the tubes and microphones and the wax, it's magic!
When I was little, 4 or 5 years old, the first guitar I had was given to me by a blacklisted violinist - a lefty, commie guy, pinko man.
I think I'm more relaxed; I think I'm more philosophical. I don't get worried as much as I used to about things.
Uncle Dave Macon was a great balladeer and banjo player from the early part of the 19th century... He would take a social problem or something that he was looking at and make up a clever little song about it, you know, in a language everyone understood, a man of the people.
Music is all starting to sound alike in the modern era. Afro-pop sounds exactly like L.A. pop - there's no difference, no ambience, no real resonance.
I went on tour with Ricky Skaggs and his wife, Sharon White, and the White Family in 2015. It was fantastic. They're all the greatest singers of that country stuff, traditional country up into bluegrass.
R&B and all that stuff was always very spare and spontaneous. Nobody made those records under solid gold situations. It was just in and out, and you didn't labor over the thing. I like music like that.
Film work is a job I like to do because I really love to solve problems.
A microphone has a certain range. It's not as good as your ears, but it will capture an enclosed space, the harmonic content in a room. Nice old tube mikes do that pretty well. And that's a good sound.
People who aren't as interested in recorded music as they used to be will say, 'Oh, 'Buena Vista?' Loved it.' And I'll say, 'Well, how about any of my other recent records. I've been doing some pretty good ones. You like those?' And they go, 'Huh?'
I always like spoken word records.
The Woody Guthrie 'Dust Bowl' tunes were really fascinating.
I've listened to blues my whole life. I know it, I play it, I understand it.
I keep my mind on track, and I don't get mad, and I don't get frustrated. Well, I do... but creative work, it's a way of controlling all that.
The blues is so expressive - nostalgic but not sentimental, mournful but not pathetic, so humble and close to the earth. It's a nuance-filled thing.
When I made the first album, I was 24, and at that age, you have nothing to say. I just played the music I loved and tried to do it justice.
American global economic imperialism is a fact. It's a known fact. It's a simple fact.
Music is a treasure hunt. You dig and dig, and sometimes you find something.
I've tended to look at my albums as research and development. I was just trying to get someplace new on each one.
If you're taught to hate and fear a people or a country, and it works, it's because of your ignorance of that country. You have no contact with it, nor do you know what you're hating and fearing.
When the real world intrudes on your musical fantasies, I get put out.
You go through these phases. That's how life is. Over the long term, you just can't do one thing. I saw that back in the Sixties when I was getting started.
Music is fragile: people die, and it's forgotten.
I always thought East L.A. music was so dreamy and languid and kinda greasy.
Travelling is hard. I'm no traveller. I hate flying, and I hate hotels.
I didn't come from a very rigid background, where there's a clan or a tribe or a religion.
If every song is in the past tense, that's a drag, so you have to predict the future.
Some people have career plans, long-range career plans. I don't know anything about that. I'm no good at it.
It's tremendously expensive to make a record on the basis of writing checks.
I've done a fair amount of commercials. I did a bunch of Champion spark plug ads and Levi's and Molson Beer. You wouldn't know it. But some of it's damn good.
I think all the music I do, which ties together, as far as I'm concerned, is fun and entertaining.
You can play as good as you want, but you have to sing from a place of living.
I didn't want tunes that preach heaven: you know, life on Earth is bad and heaven is the only hope we have. I don't quite care for that. I mean, when people sing that stuff, it's good when they do it, but I didn't want to do it.
'Geronimo' was a huge amount of work. That involved 80-piece orchestras and Indians and Tuvans and all kinds of crazy people on that thing. That's a real circus, that score.
I give up on pop music. As far as a commercial entity, as far as pop music goes, I quit; I absolutely throw in the towel. I can't handle it. I can't do it. I can't be what they need you to be.
After all is said and done and institutions fail, people still have some ability to care for each other.
I like the idea that something happens to everybody who comes to L.A. - whether they are Mexican, Irish, black, or hillbillies. You come here, and you leave all your traditions behind. And since there's no traditions here, you just make one up.
If you're white working with non-white people, you will be branded as a colonialist by some people, regardless of your efforts or intentions.
If something grooves and you like the sound, then that's all you need.
Music creates complicity, and then you feel less isolated.
Being the front guy is a hard job.
Politics runs on power and money and on ignorance.
The thing I always found about the gospel music was that it reached further into your being if you like, your mind. It takes hold of you - especially if you sing it and play it.
With country, it's hard to penetrate the thick layers of commercialism that have been applied like shellac coatings over the real thing.
I toured around for years, but the road was always a drag for me. I never made a dime. In fact, I lost a lot of money - it was horrible.
Chavez Ravine is the dawn of Chicano consciousness.
Having my son on drums has made a huge difference. I can't stress this strongly enough, in terms of the groove space and style that Joachim gave me to instinctively play what I felt in a more free way, rather than feeling constricted. That's true on record and on stage.
To me, the Internet is a big scam.
I'm a man of peace.
People respond to any good you can do in music.
I'm used to music as a tool, taking the various elements and then making something completely new out of them. And writing film music is the perfect opportunity to do that, because you can look at the film and then just let your imagination soar.
I can't help what people write or think. If somebody thinks I'm a serious archivist, they're wrong. That's been a problem. It's a shame people take that attitude, because it affects how they listen to the music. It's a big mistake to treat any pop music that way.
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