Quotes from Levon Helm

If you pour some music on whatever's wrong, it'll sure help out.

Dad and mom would have preferred that I be a doctor, a lawyer, a scientist, or a great humanitarian.

Drums just always sounded like the most fun part of that good music for me.

We all love musical architecture there's no doubt about that.

I never subscribe to the stay-at-home policy. I'm not sick of the road or sick of eating in good restaurants around the country. I like to travel.

We're all dealt with the same hand here, so to speak. I feel like I've had it a lot better than most people. I've had the opportunity to travel and play music all my life.

My dad and I played music. He teaches me a song or two every time I'm home.

Maybe the greatness we heard in [Richard Manuel]'s voice, that catch in it, came from all that pain. To this day, we don't really know.

The sound of the blues, rhythm and blues, country music, is what we lived for, black and white alike. It gave you strength to sit on one of those throbbing Allis-Chalmers tractors all day if you knew you were gonna hear something on the radio or maybe see a show that evening.

For me personally, though, the killer was published in Rolling Stone: "Levon Helm is the only drummer that can make you cry.

After I was old enough to work, they'd have to make three pies: one for each family and one for Lavon. And I'd guard mine.

As rowdy as the place was, I've seen rowdier times playing fraternity parties in Oklahoma.

So we made some big plans to be Sonny Boy's band and sat down to some good barbecue in a place I'd been eating in all my life in the black part of town. We ordered sandwiches, coleslaw, and some sodas. While we waited, someone asked Sonny Boy whether he'd known Robert Johnson. "Knew him?" Sonny Boy asked incredulously. "Boy, Robert Johnson died in my arms!

None of us ever thought to write a song about all the shit that was going on back then: war, revolution, civil war, turmoil. Our songs were trying to take you someplace else.

When we were unloading or going into a restaurant, the raisin got stepped on and smeared like a flapjack. The Hawk was displeased when he saw that. "Goddamn," he growled, "I gave you guys a hundred to get off cigarettes. I'll give you two hundred to get rid of these damn raisins!

We were in our early twenties, playing and traveling, and didn't have to answer to anybody. It was the kind of life where if you had a problem today, you could be five hundred miles away from it the next day.

My mom, God love her, she was one of those Bible people. She thought it was wrong to bother anybody, regardless of race, color or religion. It just wasn't a Christian thing to look down on anybody, and that's what she taught us.