Richie Havens Quotes & Sayings (Page 2)

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

“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.”

“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.”

“We had been reading about these beatniks who hung out or lived in Greenwich Village, and we wanted to find out what a 'beatnik' was, and so a friend and I went right to the source. What we learned, of course, was that beatniks were mostly artists.”

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

“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.”

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

“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.”