I must have played every college and university at least three times, and that goes for most of the clubs. I’d be on the road six days a week, go home and change bags, and then be gone for another six days. Richie Havens Read Quote
I believe we have a double in every country. There’s something about that that is probably a commonness that we don’t make note of. That maybe there’s only a cast for so many faces, and we live everywhere. Richie Havens Read Quote
I haven’t seen my face since I started growing my beard, which was when I was a teenager, almost; I never shaved. So I don’t really know what I look like. Richie Havens Read Quote
I actually grew up with people from all over the world. There wasn’t enough of a difference to feel different from anybody else. Their grandmother hollered at me like my grandmother hollered at all the kids when anybody did anything wrong. And their parents did the same thing. Richie Havens Read Quote
I started out by myself, but it eventually turned into a trio by the mid-’60s – a conga drum and another guitarist. And that’s been mostly what I’ve worked with most of the time. Richie Havens Read Quote
Many times, people have come up to me after singing some songs, and they’d say, ‘Richie, do you know what you did?’ And I’d say, ‘What?’ And they’d go, ‘I wrote these songs down for you to sing, and you sang them all in a row.’ But that’s the kind of communication that happens, you know. Richie Havens Read Quote
I came up in Brooklyn singing doo-wop music from the time I was 13 to the time I was 20. That music served a purpose of keeping a lot of people out of trouble, and also it was a passport from one neighborhood to another. Richie Havens Read Quote
Though it’s frequently portrayed as this crazy, unbridled festival of rain-soaked, stoned hippies dancing in the mud, Woodstock was obviously much more than that – or we wouldn’t still be talking about it in 2009. People of all ages and colors came together in the fields of Max Yasgur’s farm. Richie Havens Read Quote
I believe I inherited my sense of music from my father. My father was an ear piano player; he could just hear something and play it. Richie Havens Read Quote
