Bette Midler FTW: Hey Teenagers, Read This

[Marcuse]

41. The naive motivations of the songwriter, Robbie Robertson:

Tennessee Williams just appealed to me, the flavour of writing, the titles of the things, Sweet Bird of Youth, Cat On A Hot Tin Roof - this catches my attention, partially because I had gone to the South from Canada, really ying and yang, really a big extreme, so it hit me much harder than somebody who had gone from Washington, DC down to South Carolina - I went from Toronto to the Mississippi Delta, and … I liked the way people talked, I liked the way they moved. I liked being in a place that had rhythm in the air. I thought 'No wonder they invented rock 'n' roll here. Everything sounds like music. … and I got to come into this world, a cold outsider - cold literally from Canada … and because I didn't take it for granted, it made me write something like The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down .These old men would say , 'Yeah, but never mind Robbie. One of these days the South is going to rise again.' I didn't take it as a joke. I thought it was really touching, that these people lived this world from the standpoint of a rocking chair.'
http://theband.hiof.no/articles/dixie_viney.html