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.

Politics runs on power and money and on ignorance.

American global economic imperialism is a fact. It's a known fact. It's a simple fact.

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.

Country hillbilly music I love. Always have.

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.

When the real world intrudes on your musical fantasies, I get put out.

I can't help what people write or think. If somebody thinks I'm a serious archivist, they're wrong. That's been a problem. It's a shame people take that attitude, because it affects how they listen to the music. It's a big mistake to treat any pop music that way.

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.

The blues is so expressive - nostalgic but not sentimental, mournful but not pathetic, so humble and close to the earth. It's a nuance-filled thing.

It's tremendously expensive to make a record on the basis of writing checks.

I'm a man of peace.

I think all the music I do, which ties together, as far as I'm concerned, is fun and entertaining.

I always like spoken word records.

'Buena Vista Social Club' is a great song and a difficult tune to play.

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

The story of American pop music is the story of failure. The blues, country music, it's not the story of success. People don't win; they lose.

When I made the first album, I was 24, and at that age, you have nothing to say. I just played the music I loved and tried to do it justice.

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

It's good to see more young people playing instruments.

On any given day, if I play the guitar, I can put myself somewhere. I always thought, 'This is the way you go.' It's like a magic carpet, see?

I always have felt that most people don't have the first idea about what musicians, in the traditional sense - I don't mean in the modern media fake way, but traditionally - what they went through, what their lives were like.

I wanted to be a car pinstriper, but there was nobody to teach me how to do it. So I said, 'Music's good too. I'll do that maybe, since I can't work out how to do this pinstriping.'

The Delmore Brothers is hit music - very, very popular - and it still retains that rural flavor and simplicity. I always think of it as family music, really, because families sang it.

I always loved country gospel from back when I was a teenager in high school and started listening to bluegrass quite a lot.

To me, the Internet is a big scam.

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.

Having my son on drums has made a huge difference. I can't stress this strongly enough, in terms of the groove space and style that Joachim gave me to instinctively play what I felt in a more free way, rather than feeling constricted. That's true on record and on stage.

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

I like classical music. I especially like the French composers: Ravel in particular. Debussy. That's so soothing in a nervous world.

I used to sneak gospel tunes into my old records, just as kind of a personal thing.

I got a reputation for being 'eclectic' or some damn thing like that, but to me, the different kinds of music I play are all the same stuff - good time music - and it is the only stuff I can do.

The Woody Guthrie 'Dust Bowl' tunes were really fascinating.

I'm not interested in making folkloric records, but I like to push the traditional format around so that familiar patterns get knocked on the head.

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

I went on tour with Ricky Skaggs and his wife, Sharon White, and the White Family in 2015. It was fantastic. They're all the greatest singers of that country stuff, traditional country up into bluegrass.

I've been wanting an ice cream truck forever.

You go through these phases. That's how life is. Over the long term, you just can't do one thing. I saw that back in the Sixties when I was getting started.

When I was little, 4 or 5 years old, the first guitar I had was given to me by a blacklisted violinist - a lefty, commie guy, pinko man.

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.

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

How many BMWs do you need? How many Rolex watches you gonna wear in your lifetime, for crying out loud? What is it about that kind of desire? I don't understand it.

I didn't come from a very rigid background, where there's a clan or a tribe or a religion.

Film work is a job I like to do because I really love to solve problems.

Some people have career plans, long-range career plans. I don't know anything about that. I'm no good at it.

I like the idea that something happens to everybody who comes to L.A. - whether they are Mexican, Irish, black, or hillbillies. You come here, and you leave all your traditions behind. And since there's no traditions here, you just make one up.

I think I'm more relaxed; I think I'm more philosophical. I don't get worried as much as I used to about things.

The world will always love Cuban music, however it changes.

I'm a great lover of ballads.

If every song is in the past tense, that's a drag, so you have to predict the future.