Quotes from Ry Cooder

If something grooves and you like the sound, then that's all you need.

It all started back in '69 when I worked with Jack Nitzche on 'Performance.' That was my first experience of doing soundtracks, and I've enjoyed doing them ever since.

To me, the essence of the music is the most important thing.

If it hadn't been for record people like Ralph Peer, the Chess brothers, and Alan Lomax, then life would've been unbelievably dull, and I would've been sacking groceries somewhere and probably, at this point, running a little 7-Eleven down by the airport.

All the money in the world is spent on feeling good.

I've done a fair amount of commercials. I did a bunch of Champion spark plug ads and Levi's and Molson Beer. You wouldn't know it. But some of it's damn good.

Musicians understand each other through means other that speaking.

I always like spoken word records.

I don't understand the public, but I do believe the public is oversold and underrated every day. Give the people something interesting, something to chew on, I say.

Uncle Dave Macon was a great balladeer and banjo player from the early part of the 19th century... He would take a social problem or something that he was looking at and make up a clever little song about it, you know, in a language everyone understood, a man of the people.

R&B and all that stuff was always very spare and spontaneous. Nobody made those records under solid gold situations. It was just in and out, and you didn't labor over the thing. I like music like that.

Music is all starting to sound alike in the modern era. Afro-pop sounds exactly like L.A. pop - there's no difference, no ambience, no real resonance.

Critics don't sell records, unfortunately. No one reads what they write anyway.

Back in the early '70s, when Susie and I were first married, we had a little house that we rented, and we used to have parties. People would come, and they wouldn't leave. I used to get so tired. I'd put on the Stanley Brothers, 'Songs for the Good People,' and the house would clear in five minutes. It was not liked; it was alien. It was weird.

Sure, immigrants will do work that no-one else will do. There was even a movie about it - 'A Day Without Mexicans.'

You have to be around people you trust; otherwise you can't do anything - you're afraid, you're paranoid, and you can't do any work.

The ocean is very comfortable. I could never live inland.

People who get together, regardless of other structures, will find something in common. They are bound to. That was the Pete Seeger let's-all-sing theory.

'Geronimo' was a huge amount of work. That involved 80-piece orchestras and Indians and Tuvans and all kinds of crazy people on that thing. That's a real circus, that score.

I'm used to music as a tool, taking the various elements and then making something completely new out of them. And writing film music is the perfect opportunity to do that, because you can look at the film and then just let your imagination soar.

You have to be able to improvise and respond to what's going on around you. Then you might get a good piece of work done.

People who love the applause should have it, but I don't care for it.

I always think you should push your envelope every chance you get.

What kills music in films is when it's done as performance, drawing attention to the fact that someone's in the background playing it.