Richie Havens Quotes

Woodstock was not about sex, drugs, and rock and roll. It was about spirituality, about love, about sharing, about helping each other, living in peace and harmony.

I'm not in show business; I'm in the communications business. That's what it's about for me.

Though it's frequently portrayed as this crazy, unbridled festival of rain-soaked, stoned hippies dancing in the mud, Woodstock was obviously much more than that - or we wouldn't still be talking about it in 2009. People of all ages and colors came together in the fields of Max Yasgur's farm.

The direction for my music is heaven, of course. We gear all things to the realm of heaven - which is the mind, the organized mind.

Woodstock happened in August 1969, long before the Internet and mobile phones made it possible to communicate instantly with anyone, anywhere. It was a time when we werent able to witness world events or the horrors of war live on 24-hour news channels.

Woodstock was both a peaceful protest and a global celebration.

Everything I want to do, and to accomplish, is on the other side of the universe. That's peace of mind, energy, freedom. And I'm making myself ready to go, joyfully and willingly. I think I'm ready to be everybody's friend, and to do anything for anybody. It's heavy.

I remember the first time I was booked into a jazz club. I was scared to death. I'm not a jazz artist. So I got to the club and spotted this big poster saying, 'Richie Havens, folk jazz artist.' Then I'd go to a rock club and I'm billed as a 'folk rock performer' and in the blues clubs I'd be a 'folk blues entertainer.'

I believe we have a double in every country. There's something about that that is probably a commonness that we don't make note of. That maybe there's only a cast for so many faces, and we live everywhere.

I opened the Woodstock Festival even though I was supposed to be fifth. I said, 'What am I doing here? No, no, not me, not first!' I had to go on stage because there was no one else to go on first - the concert was already two-and-a-half hours late.

I saw the Village as a place you could escape to, to express yourself. When I first went there, I wrote and performed poetry. Then I drew portraits for a couple of years. It took a while before I thought about picking up a guitar.

I came up in Brooklyn singing doo-wop music from the time I was 13 to the time I was 20. That music served a purpose of keeping a lot of people out of trouble, and also it was a passport from one neighborhood to another.

Live Aid was a baby Woodstock, a child of Woodstock, which I call Globalstock.

Richie is the only one of my nine who's really moved away. I can't get rid of most of them.

I believe I inherited my sense of music from my father. My father was an ear piano player; he could just hear something and play it.

I must have played every college and university at least three times, and that goes for most of the clubs. I'd be on the road six days a week, go home and change bags, and then be gone for another six days.

I eat once a day if I remember, and I try never to go to sleep.

My right wrist is connected to the left foot. You know, if the left foot doesn't work, the right wrist doesn't work, and that's really the truth.

I started out by myself, but it eventually turned into a trio by the mid-'60s - a conga drum and another guitarist. And that's been mostly what I've worked with most of the time.

My mother's family came from the British West Indies. And my father's family came from, well, my father's father came from the Montana/South Dakota area. They were Blackfoot Indian.

I don't get sick. I can't afford to get sick.

Nothing has really changed. We had bootleg albums in the '60s and today we have Internet file sharing. They just found a better way to do it -- get music for free. What's great about today is an artist has an opportunity to go direct to their audience without dealing with a middleman. People can go directly to the web for CDs, DVDs and downloads. I think that's the best thing that's happened, that people's music is being flashed around the world.

When I write a song today, basically it goes on the stage tomorrow. That's the way it works. You cannont interrupt your consciousness; it all comes from the subconscious, it can happen anywhere. It could be in a telephone booth.

I tended to listen to doo-wop, but my grandmother would always have the radio on all day and she'd start with Yiddish and then move on to gospel and later to "make believe" ballroom music. I got to hear all kinds of music and my mother would get up to go to work listening to country music. That was her alarm clock. My dad was a jazz lover and listened to the man who wrote "Misty", Errol Garner. He loved piano players, so I got to listen to that as well.