Bonnie Raitt Quotes
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I never saw music in terms of men and women or black and white. There was just cool and uncool.
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I have a really full life, both within music and outside it.
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I've watched my peers get better with age and hoped that would happen with me.
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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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I'm honored when young people say they've gone to school on slide guitar with my records. But people get their influence from my live shows and records and YouTube, not me personally. I walk around with a hat on. People don't know it's me.
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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'm happy to say that at 62, I think I've reached that point where stuff doesn't bother me as much, and my gratitude level has gone way up, especially having gone through the loss that I've had, and losing so many of the great artists that I was close to. They taught me how to see it with a grain of salt and a lot of humor and perspective.
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We did a two month tour with Taj Mahal that was really healing and cathartic and a good distraction after my brother passed away. Then I knew I wanted to take a year off, and it was really nice to have that chance to fall apart.
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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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Finding great songs is the hard part of my gig - it's not as hard as songwriting, that's much more daunting - but I love playing other people's music.
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'I Will Not Be Broken' has really become very healing for me. Any time you go through a cataclysmic event... it's going to inform the richness that you sing from... The experiences of life make all your emotions, I think, deeper.
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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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In 1967 I entered Harvard as a freshman, confident - in the way that only 17-year-olds are - that I could change the world. My major was African Studies, and my plan was to travel to Tanzania, where President Julius Nyerere was creating a government based on democracy and socialism.
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I'm just glad that I'm the musical equivalent of a character actress, because blues singers can keep singing and having an audience at 35, and someone like Madonna's gonna have to find something else to do, 'cos I don't care how pointy those bras are that she wears, they're still gonna look a little odd when she's 55!
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Elvis might have compromised his musical style a bit towards the end, but that doesn't mean that artists from the rock n' roll/folk-roots culture - of which he was not really a part - shouldn't get better as they get older, like the great jazz or blues artists.
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Superficial pop will always exist - there've always been Fabians - but when people like Dire Straits and Bruce Hornsby start having hits, it suggests that there's a revolution going on in music.
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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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With the new ways of getting music out, you don't need a label if you're a legacy artist.
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I was always drawn to the blues. Alberta Hunter at the Cookery was a life-changing experience. I only wanted to get enriched as a performer as I got older, to have an audience which got older, too, and would come to see me when I'm 80.
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I've been lucky enough that I can gather all sorts of experiences and find inspiration by traveling around and by spending time with people I admire.
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I think I'm a living embodiment of, 'Don't try to push me around or squash me,' whether its how I talk to a record label or in my relationships.
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The great thing about the arts, and especially popular music, is that it really does cut across genres and races and classes.
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Playing guitar was one of my childhood hobbies, and I had played a little at school and at camp. 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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I just play the music that I love with musicians that I respect, and fortunately, I'm in a position where people are willing to play with me, and perhaps I can do something to help them.