A Quote by John Lee Hooker

You can go to Europe, and there's no turnin' back - any parts of Europe. Wherever you are, there is no stop and go for the blues. The blues go but it don't stop. — © John Lee Hooker
You can go to Europe, and there's no turnin' back - any parts of Europe. Wherever you are, there is no stop and go for the blues. The blues go but it don't stop.
What we've witnessed in the past 25 or 30 years is just incredible. We've birthed 30,000 or 40,000 restaurants. I used to go to Europe every year to get experience [and ideas]. I don't go to Europe anymore. I go to Oregon, I go to Washington, I go to Louisiana, I go to Little Rock, I go to Austin, I travel New York City. I don't go to Europe anymore.
There are happy blues, sad blues, lonesome blues, red-hot blues, mad blues, and loving blues. Blues is a testimony to the fullness of life.
Nowadays blues in particular has a wide, wide, wide, wide net of everything that's called blues. I think if somebody's coming to it in the last ten years or whatever, or even fifteen years, what their experience is what is called blues is different from mine. I have to expand my range of what's been called the blues. I think somebody who's new to it would have to go back and to see what is called blues now, where it came from. If that makes sense.
And then I think we realized, like any young guys, that blues are not learned in a monastery. You've got to go out there and get your heart broke and then come back and then you can sing the blues.
I want to go back to the format that radio started with rock n' roll, with country artists and rhythm and blues with that oldies type feeling. I want to put it all together and create a Top 40 of rhythm and blues and country and straight blues with Wolfman at the reins.
Wherever you go in Europe, you'll find each country has particular flavours in their baked goods. It is one of the big differences between Europe and the United States.
I think that the blues is in everything, so it's not possible to neglect it. You hear somebody go 'Ooh ooh oooh,' and that's the blues. You hear a rock n' roll song. That's the blues. Somebody playing a guitar solo? They're playing the blues.
Blues for me is having things not go your way - life, love, job, money, ... It is not about the oppression of my ancestors, who were trying to get back at the overseers. Blues is different for my generation.
Comedy is a funny thing, and it's really not like any other art form in that it's very specialized and varied in it's content, but generic in it's title. You would never go to a club just to see "Live music," you would go to a jazz club to see jazz, a blues club to see blues, etc. But when you go to see "standup comedy," if you don't know the performers material, you really don't have any idea what you're gonna get.
I have heartaches, I have blues. No matter what you got, the blues is there. 'Cause that's all I know - the blues. And I can sing the blues so deep until you can have this room full of money and I can give you the blues.
I don't remember any impression [from blues].The blues was just everywhere in the Mississippi Delta. It was mostly black sharecroppers living there, and there was a lot of blues around. Sometimes the guys would sing the blues in the fields, working.
Don't stop. Keep right on going. Hitch up your trailer and go to Canada or down to Old Mexico. Head for Europe if you can afford it, or go to Mardi Gras. Go someplace you've heard about, where you can fish or hunt or collect rocks or just look up at the sky. Find out what's at the end of some country road. Go see what's over the next hill, and the one after that, and the one after that.
Here, in the US, people like our music because it's very similar to blues. It's the same thing in Europe. Everyone listens to blues and rock, it's universal. Everyone dances.
It's marvelous when you visit Tokyo: they have these clubs, and they'll have 'Motown Night' or 'The Beatles - Totally Authentic and Live!' You know it's shrunk, but at least there's some sort of youthful figure to it. Whereas, the blues scene in Europe is more like, 'Here we go again.'
Now if you ask me about coming from Europe, I would suggest to any young player interested in the NBA to not spend two or three years in Europe searching for money. Just give it a shot. You can always go back.
Unless we are able to commit to a permanent growing settlement [on Mars], then I don't think just going there with humans and coming back is worth doing. The expense of planning to come back is like the people who left Europe to come to America and then to turn around and go back to Europe, it really doesn't make any sense at all.
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