I do feel my loved ones that have passed on; I feel them looking over my shoulder… So yeah, that’s pretty profound, when you’re not expecting it, you didn’t particularly believe in it and then it just sort of happens too often to ignore. Bonnie Raitt Read Quote
I Will Not Be Broken’ has really become very healing for me. Any time you go through a cataclysmic event… it’s going to inform the richness that you sing from… The experiences of life make all your emotions, I think, deeper. Bonnie Raitt Read Quote
Quakers are known for wanting to give back. Ban the bomb and the civil rights movement and the native American struggle for justice – those things were very, very front-burner in my childhood, as were the ideas of working for peace and if you have more than you need, then you share it with people who don’t. Bonnie Raitt Read Quote
Not being a natural songwriter… for me the appreciation of a great song and the writers came early on, growing up in a musical family. My dad got to sing songs by some of the greatest writers of all time, Rodgers and Hammerstein. Bonnie Raitt Read Quote
Nobody taught me to play bottleneck. I just saw it and taught myself. I got an old bottle and steamed the label off, put it on the wrong finger, I basically did everything wrong until I met some of the Blues legends early in my career who taught me another way. I didn’t have anyone to tell me women didn’t play bottleneck. Bonnie Raitt Read Quote
I was offered to take over for Reba in ‘Annie Get Your Gun,’ but it wasn’t where I wanted to be. I think my fans would be upset if I confined my shows to one city for a long period of time. Bonnie Raitt Read Quote
When you find a song that you love, you just have to do it – why would I try to match it? When I wrote more of the songs in the ’90s – ‘Nick of Time’ and other songs I was surprised I came up with – it was because nobody else was saying what I wanted to say. Bonnie Raitt Read Quote
I tend to be freer on the piano. I never took guitar lessons, so my reach exceeds my grasp – what I hear in my head I don’t always know how to play. But I love to play over something else. I’m not a self-starter. I get kind of bored with the same three folk chords that I know. Bonnie Raitt Read Quote
I’m honored when young people say they’ve gone to school on slide guitar with my records. But people get their influence from my live shows and records and YouTube, not me personally. I walk around with a hat on. People don’t know it’s me. Bonnie Raitt Read Quote
