Top 68 Van Zandt Quotes
#1. Steve Van Zandt, the poor guy, doesn't get to play enough as it is with me hogging a lot of the solos. Steve has always been a fabulous guitarist. Back from the day when we were both teenagers together, he led his band and played lead and was always a hot guitar player.
Bruce Springsteen
#2. I started out as a folk singer, and kinda got sidetracked playin' honky tonks and such, but I was always a working musician. I didn't want to be Townes Van Zandt or Guy Clark, but I wanted to play in front of their audiences, you know what I mean?
Ray Wylie Hubbard
#4. Townes Van Zandt is the best songwriter in the whole world, and I'll stand on Bob Dylan's coffee table in my cowboy boots and say that.
Steve Earle
#5. As most of the population suffers through life, barely surviving, disappointed and confused day after day, hopeless, wondering what happened to their strong and beautiful country, it is in the media's power to restore, if not some of our quality of life, at least a bit of our peace of mind.
Steven Van Zandt
#6. Timing really is nearly everything. And what it isn't, circumstance makes up for.
Steven Van Zandt
#8. I am a reformed Taoist, part-time Buddhist, Hindu, animist, pagan, Jewish mystic, and Christian. I always got along great with priests and rabbis and mullahs and gurus, even though I spend most of my life constructively criticizing them.
Steven Van Zandt
#10. Rock n' roll is our religion, and we will continue to lose disciples as we go, but we pick up the fallen flag and keep moving forward, bringing forth the good news that our heroes have helped create, their bodies lost, but their spirits and their good work everlasting.
Steven Van Zandt
#12. There are only two kinds of songs; there's the blues, and there's zip-a-dee-doo-dah,
Townes Van Zandt
#13. I have lost a brother and a best friend. The world has lost one of the greatest actors of all time.
Steven Van Zandt
#14. C-17s should be ready to go at various military bases around the world packed with water, food, medical supplies, sleeping bags and tents, all prepared to be air dropped in alongside soldiers and doctors to begin relief efforts.
Steven Van Zandt
#15. First of all, just because the Tea Party people appear to be generally uneducated, ignorant about the political process, ignorant about economics, confused about their own platform from the beginning, and indelicate when it comes to the craft of diplomacy, doesn't mean they're wrong.
Steven Van Zandt
#16. I've met Bob Dylan's bodyguards, and if Steve Earle thinks he can stand on Bob Dylan's coffee table, he's sadly mistaken,
Townes Van Zandt
#17. I've always considered the government taking one out of every two dollars I earn absolute tyranny.
Steven Van Zandt
#18. Let the wealthier countries and corporations of the world fund an Emergency Organization.
Steven Van Zandt
#19. My lifelong friend and mentor Frank Barsalona is gone. And the music business as we knew it went with him.
Steven Van Zandt
#21. It's become uncool to play other people's songs, and that's absurd. It has got to change. It's the reason why everything's so mediocre.
Steven Van Zandt
#22. Like most people, I've always felt using words like 'best' when applied to art is a fun way for critics to stay busy at the end of the year, and I guess a good way to help get ratings for awards shows, which is fine.
Steven Van Zandt
#23. Aloneness is a state of being, whereas loneliness is a state of feeling. It's like the difference between being broke and being poor.
Townes Van Zandt
#24. Human's can't live in the present as animals do; they just live in the present. But human's are always thinking about the future or the past.
Townes Van Zandt
#25. I'm not pretending to be an academic, or to have this down to a science. It's strictly my taste. But there is a connection between everything I play and the sets I put together.
Steven Van Zandt
#26. Rock n' roll as a genre is different from pop and hip hop: it is about bands, and that for me suggests brotherhood, family, friendship and community.
Steven Van Zandt
#27. Now the dark air is like fire on my skin, And even the moonlight is blinding
Townes Van Zandt
#28. The Rascals are something else. They're up there with the Beatles, and Stones and Byrds. That level of musicality. They have a real chemistry. It is like magic.
Steven Van Zandt
#29. What the world needs is an Emergency Boss. An Emergency Czar. An Emergency Commander. A true Master Of Disaster. One person completely responsible for the anticipation, immediate reconnaissance, and urgent execution of rescue and relief efforts around the world.
Steven Van Zandt
#30. From the age of 14, 13, I guess I wanted to be a rock 'n' roll star. And that was it. I wanted to make a living playing rock 'n' roll, and it was a ridiculously impossible dream at that time. But it was kind of all I ever wanted to do. It's nice to do it.
Steven Van Zandt
#31. You think your congressman is working all day to get you a job? He may want to. He or she is probably not a bad person. They probably want to do the right thing. But they can't.
Steven Van Zandt
#32. You have to love what you're doing in order to find the energy.
Steven Van Zandt
#33. I don't envision a very long life for myself. I think my life will run out before my work does. I've designed it that way.
Townes Van Zandt
#34. I'd like to write some songs that are so good that nobody understands them. Not even myself.
Townes Van Zandt
#35. come on mama, let's rent us a boat
sail down that gibraltar moat
shed a tear every time we pass tangier
Townes Van Zandt
#36. Rock 'n' roll is a participatory sport. It ain't passive. It ain't TV. Go out there and rock 'n' roll and dance and have fun.
Steven Van Zandt
#37. Young fans want to know about the past and older fans also want to find new music.
Steven Van Zandt
#38. The British invasion was the most important event of my life. I was in New Jersey and the night I saw the Beatles changed everything. I had seen Elvis before and he had done nothing for me, but these guys were in a band.
Steven Van Zandt
#39. I don't envision a long life for myself. Like, I think my life will run out before my work does, y'know? I've designed it that way.
Townes Van Zandt
#40. Enuff Z'nuff is one of the most underrated bands in the world!
Steven Van Zandt
#41. The simple fact is we do not live in a democracy. Certainly not the kind our Founding Fathers intended. We live in a corporate dictatorship represented by, and beholden to, no single human being you can reason with or hold responsible for anything.
Steven Van Zandt
#42. What I do is between me and the Lord, to examine and possibly alter the state of grace in which I live, and thereby the state of grace of anybody who listens.
Townes Van Zandt
#43. There's only two kinds of music: the blues and zippety doo-dah.
Townes Van Zandt
#44. I'm a real band guy, you know? I'm really good at certain things, and the band stuff is one of them.
Steven Van Zandt
#45. I have a bigger mission than any kind of specific politics, which is trying to restore the accessibility of rock 'n' roll.
Steven Van Zandt
#46. The energy that comes when you compel people to dance stays with you your whole career - whether you are playing to 100,000 people at Glastonbury or 1,000 kids in a club.
Steven Van Zandt
#47. Band members have a special bond. A great band is more than just some people working together. It's like a highly specialized army unit, or a winning sports team. A unique combination of elements that becomes stronger together than apart.
Steven Van Zandt
#48. Rock music had become my religion. Radio my church. And these DJs my priests, rabbis and gurus.
Steven Van Zandt
#49. Well I was born a rambler friends, and I intend to die that way. It could be twenty years from now it could be most any day. But if there ain't no whiskey and wimen lord behind those heavenly doors, I'm gonna take my chances down below and of that you can be sure.
Townes Van Zandt
#50. All of a sudden there's a song - there in your hotel room playing your guitar - and you write it, and two or three years later it will come true. It keeps you on your toes.
Townes Van Zandt
#51. I know what it takes to make a band, how they should interact, what makes a record sound like it's a band - everything having to do with a band, I happen to be into.
Steven Van Zandt
#52. The first rule of rock and roll is it's all about live. Then you have to learn a second craft, which is making records. It should go in that order.
Steven Van Zandt
#53. Sorrow and solitude, these are the precious things/ And the only words that are worth remembering.
Townes Van Zandt
#54. You must laugh in the face of adversity. In the end, humor is the greatest weapon against the pain. The
K. Hollan Van Zandt
#55. There is an established tradition of actors directing films that have a particular, personal meaning for them - Warren Beatty, Clint Eastwood, Kevin Costner, and most recently George Clooney to name a few. Remarkably, their films share an unusually high percentage of being very good.
Steven Van Zandt
#57. I didn't make that much money ... Once I joined Bruce (Springsteen), I took a huge pay cut.
Steven Van Zandt
#58. I think it's important that all 50 years of rock 'n' roll live in the same place, because it's all connected.
Steven Van Zandt
#59. Anytime you spend six months on a song (Born to Run), there's something not exactly going right. A song should take about three hours.
Steven Van Zandt
#60. The quality of our lives is diminished every time we lose a great artist. It's a different world without Sam Cooke, Otis Redding, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, Curtis Mayfield, Brian Jones and the rest.
Steven Van Zandt
#61. I'd never go onstage in my life without fully intending to do the best show you've ever seen.
Steven Van Zandt
#62. We never understood the concept of people going onstage and giving anything less than 100 percent. Maybe that's a blue-collar work ethic, but I call it just ethics.
Steven Van Zandt
#63. Humans can't live in the present, like animals do. Humans are always thinking about the future or the
past. So it's a veil of tears, man. I don't know anything that's going to benefit me now, except love. I
just need an overwhelming amount of love. And a nap. Mostly a nap.
Townes Van Zandt
#64. I don't know why I write really depressing songs. I'm a kind of melancholy guy, I suppose. But I figure I'm about normal.
Townes Van Zandt
#65. I am interested in the interaction of a group of people who have a common goal, or a common obsession, each contributing something unique to make something greater than the sum of its parts. I don't know why, but from day one, that has interested me.
Steven Van Zandt
#66. I was obsessed with politics in the '80s. I've recovered and I'm feeling much better now, thank you.
Steven Van Zandt
#67. I don't think you can ever do your best. Doing your best is a process of trying to do your best.
Townes Van Zandt
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