Richie Havens Quotes

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 actually grew up with people from all over the world. There wasn't enough of a difference to feel different from anybody else. Their grandmother hollered at me like my grandmother hollered at all the kids when anybody did anything wrong. And their parents did the same thing.
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 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 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.
I don't get sick. I can't afford to get sick.
I eat once a day if I remember, and I try never to go to sleep.
I haven't seen my face since I started growing my beard, which was when I was a teenager, almost; I never shaved. So I don't really know what I look like.
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 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 really sing songs that move me. I'm not in show business. I'm in the communications business. That's what it's for me.
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 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 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.
Live Aid was a baby Woodstock, a child of Woodstock, which I call Globalstock.
Many times, people have come up to me after singing some songs, and they'd say, 'Richie, do you know what you did?' And I'd say, 'What?' And they'd go, 'I wrote these songs down for you to sing, and you sang them all in a row.' But that's the kind of communication that happens, you know.
Music is the major form of communication. It's the commonest vibration, the people's news broadcast, especially for kids.
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.
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.
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.
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AuthorName
Richie Havens
Profession
Musician
BirthDate
21 January, 1941
DeathDate
22 April, 2013
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