Author:Robbie Robertson
This is Robbie Robertson’s autobiography and goes up to the Last Waltz and the breakup of The Band. Although it’s a long book to cover 33 years, it’s an interesting story, even in the parts which aren’t to do with music, because of his unusual background. He was brought up by his mother and father in Toronto, but still paid regular visits to his mother’s Mohawk relatives on the Six Nations Reservation. When his parents divorced, he found out that his real father was a professional gambler who had died in a road accident; his father’s brother welcomes him into the family, but then turns out to be heavily involved in deals with the Mafia. He writes perceptively about all of this.
The main story is the music, though, and as he points out, he started out playing rock and roll just as it was starting, and he had a big role in some of the changes it went through. Lots of interesting stuff about the life of touring with Ronnie Hawkins, but the main character here is Levon Helm, who Robertson regarded as an elder brother and describes with great affection. There is no mention of Helm’s later very public contempt for him. He only comments on his surprise on how bitter Helm was towards Ronnie Hawkins when the Hawks split with him, as the two of them had been very close. So you’re left to decide for yourself if this was a recurring streak in Helm’s character.
It sags in the middle when it comes close to being a list of celebrities that he met through Dylan, but is fascinating on the actual touring with Dylan, then the retreat to Big Pink, becoming The Band, and the later decline. The “life on the road” which he wanted to leave, was clearly the drink and drugs that were dragging them down. The Band’s music might have been at odds with the excesses of sixties rock, but their lives clearly weren’t.
Length of Read:Long
Might appeal to people who enjoyed…
Dylan’s Chronicles. Springsteen’s Born to Run. Any of the better rock autobiographies really.
One thing you’ve learned
Quinn the Eskimo is named after the character Inuk the Eskimo played by Anthony Quinn in The Savage Innocents.
Thanks for the review. Just reading about Dylan’s tour of Oz Robbie comes across as a bit of a prick and certainly the remaining members of the Band thought so.
Good guitar player though.
Even if that’s true to some degree, he wasn’t the only one in that group, not by some distance.
I’d forgive him anything for Those Songs.
And, it has to be said, what a pretty boy he was.
Got this on audiobook, but it’s a long way down the list. “Judas” is up next
The Bible, Conch ?
I read that every day, aloud on the street.
Sorry mate, I repented earlier.
I was watching some YouTube of interviews with Robbie. His hair looks disturbingly like a rug though I’m sure it isn’t.
Some of his solo albums were a bit strange, weren’t they?
The fact that he can’t sing is a problem.
He is slightly touchy about his singing in the book. Although he praises the Band’s three singers, and is acute about their different styles, he suggests that he helped work out their parts, and his asthma meant that he had to limit his singing. But I agree that he just wasn’t much of a singer, and this did weaken his solo albums.
He can barely carry a tune in a bucket but there’s no shame in that when you have three great singers around you singing songs which you wrote.
I thought, and still think, that Storyville is magnificent.
I’ll have to give it another listen. Bought it cos I really liked Breakin’ The Rules used at the end of the film Until The End Of The World but not on the soundtrack CD. I gave the album a listen years ago and nothing else on it interested me.
I really like a few songs on his first solo album, and Songs For Native Americans has a couple of good tracks.
It’s not on YouTube but Soap Box Preacher is magnificent. There are some longeurs on the album as a whole though.
Interested to read the book. He gives the appearance of and has the reputation of being up himself and someone who takes all the credit. But it may be that his reputation issuffering a bit like Paul McCartney’s did for being the one person who had the discipline and control to hold everything together. That’s never the coolest position to be in.
He’s very full of himself. Obviously a great songwriter, but other members disputed that he should get solo credit on many songs. Hence Helm’s “contempt” of him.
Yup, that’s the impression I got from Levon Helm’s book. That the songs were way more communally composed than Robbie lets on. Interestingly it was Garth Hudson who Helm thought deserved more credit…
Still, the other impression I got was that Robbie was the hustler, the contact maker and the guy who made the connections which got them all up a level. That in itself is no small achievement, never mind being in The Band…
Always strikes me as a huge self-mythologiser. It’s clear in the Last Waltz where he’s talking in grand terms about the mystical path which has run its course and blah and blah, and the other members are like, what’s he on about and why’s he broken the band up?
Rick Danko was the coolest in the Band, anyway
Just finished reading this myself – I enjoyed it, but there were a few places in the book where I thought to myself “Really, Robbie? Really?” One was the issue over publishing – Robbie says that initially the publishing was split equally between the band members at his request, until lo and behold (SWIDT?) one after another they came up to him and asked him to buy out their shares.
The second was over giving up touring and the Last Waltz – his account basically says, “I told the guys, hey, we need to get off the road so we can rest and recharge and make more wonderful music together, and they all said, I repeat ALL said oh wow Robbie that is an EXCELLENT idea!! No, really, they did! Just ask them…oh, wait…”
Good book though.
Sad news that Robbie Robertson has died. I’ll let someone with more knowledge of The Band post a suitable obit, as this is about the limit of my knowledge, cool and laidback though it is