My Robbie Robertson Interview From 2018

A Transcript Of Our "Celebration Rock" Chat, On The 1st Anniversary Of His Passing

From 2016 to ’18, I hosted a podcast for Cumulus Radio called Celebration Rock. In a way it was a precursor to my present pod Indiecast, only Celebration Rock was more of an interview program with a revolving cast of celebrity guests and writer friends. Lately, I’ve been looking at the archives and realizing there’s some “pretty good stuff,” to borrow a phrase. I hung out with Jeff Tweedy and John Stirratt backstage before a Wilco gig. I did an 80-minute interview with Father John Misty at the height of the Pure Comedy madness. I talked with Mitski in her hotel room (near the Mall Of America!) before she shipped off to the next town. I spoke with all three members of Boygenius (separately, and two of the interviews were about specific Springsteen albums, Darkness On The Edge Of Town for Julien Baker and Nebraska for Phoebe Bridgers). I also chatted with with rock legends like Robert Plant and David Crosby — one was very cool and the other was salty because he waited five minutes for me to get on the line.

I decided that I wanted to start transcribing these interviews, so that they can finally exist in print form. It wasn’t hard for me to pick the first one — it had to be possibly the most memorable and meaningful Celebration Rock interview for me personally, my 2018 conversation with Robbie Robertson. No doubt this talk is more precious to me in light of Robertson’s passing, which occurred nearly one year ago on Aug. 9. But even in the moment, it shifted my perspective on an iconic (and also polarizing) figure.

Like pretty much all fans of The Band, I long had mixed emotions about Robertson going into this interview. His accomplishments as a musician and songwriter are inarguable: His involvement with Bob Dylan’s historic 1965-66 world tour, The Basement Tapes, and the first two Band records cemented his legacy before he turned 30. But the thorough slagging he received from Levon Helm in Helm’s 1993 memoir This Wheel’s On Fire — which cast Robertson as an arrogant opportunist who cut his bandmates out of their fair share of the spoils of success — put a permanent stain on his name.

I’m not interested in re-litigating all of Helm’s claims in this space (I wrote about the conflict in my book Twilight Of The Gods, as well as in this column), but I now view my previous inclination to take Helm 100 percent at his word as unfair. And this interview had a lot to do with that personal shift. And then there’s the passage of time, and the fact that Levon and Robbie are no longer with us. My current take on the sad Levon vs. Robbie situation is that The Band was a family, and family is complicated, and those of us on the outside can never know the full story. Both men were flawed, and those flaws are part of the public record. All we have now is the music, and the music is more than enough.

More than anything, talking with Robertson reminded me how incredible his body of work is. And we only really focused on a small part of it: The interview was timed with the 50th anniversary box set for The Band’s 1968 debut LP, Music From Big Pink, which featured a new remix by Bob Clearmountain. We also touched on his work with Dylan on the “electric” tour and The Basement Tapes. Of course, there’s so much more we could have talked about. My biggest regret is that we didn’t get to discuss his 1987 solo debut, the Daniel Lanois production featuring a galaxy of guest stars (Peter Gabriel, U2, The Bodeans, Maria McKee, etc.) that inches up my list of favorite albums with each passing year. Sadly, we only had about 50 minutes. I could have talked to him at least five times longer than that.

What follows is most of that interview. (If you want to hear the whole thing, here you go.) Even in print form, Robertson’s charisma and born-storyteller ability shines through. It makes me miss the guy even more. I wish he were still here. RIP.

I'm sure you hear this all the time, but last summer I was in West Saugerties, New York for the first time with a friend of mine, and we made a special point to drive into the woods through winding roads to find the Big Pink house. And I had my friend take a picture of me in front of it. I'm not normally like that with musical landmarks, but that house in particular has special significance to me, and I'm sure thousands of other people, that have made that pilgrimage. It made me think: Have you been back to that house since the late ’60s? Or are you not sentimental in that way?

I have been back there. What did I do? I think it was a CBS Sunday Morning show some years ago. They were interviewing me and they wanted to go back there. And boy, it hadn't changed much. It still looked kind of odd out in the middle of the wilderness. The appeal of this place was, it was in the middle of a hundred acres and we could make all the noise that we wanted to. Nobody would bother us, we wouldn't bother nobody. Freedom at last. That was the feeling.

When I went back there, some guy — he was like a record collector or something, an archivist of some kind — was in the basement. It was filled with vinyl records and stuff, and it seemed appropriate that he was there. But looking through the house, it looked the same and it even smelled the same.

What you guys were doing at that house, it started this mythology for artists or bands who decide that they're going to go into the woods and rent a cabin and that's how they're going to make their masterpiece. Where did the idea come for you guys to do that? Because you were not necessarily a “rural” band in that way. You were out on the road, playing really hard-edge music as The Hawks.

This had been a dream of mine, because I had discovered over the years that I wasn't really comfortable writing on the road. For a long time, we played seven nights a week. And so for writing, what do I do? Do I get up in the morning and try to write a song or do I try to write a song after we're done playing in some joint in the middle of the night or whatever?

I always had this dream of having a place, a place that in my mind I thought of it as a clubhouse, a workshop, a place where we could go and create and discover, and that we could put together all the musicalities that we had been gathering over the many years and bring that all to the surface in the music that we were going to make. That was something that I kept talking about for years and years and years, until the other guys were like, "Yeah, that's what we need. That's what we should have." It was ingrained in them by then. So finally, when we were in New York City, and it was hard to find a place to create and work, and we were always... it was bothering somebody or somebody [would say], "Okay, you can work on some music here, but you have to start it at 10 at night and finish by midnight." There were ridiculous stipulations.

It was Albert Grossman, who was our manager — and Bob Dylan's manager and many people's manager — who had moved up to Woodstock. He thought it was great sanctuary and he said, "You guys could do whatever you want up there. You should really check it out." So, we did. And it was Rick Danko who found the pink house out there, that had what we thought were all of the ingredients for us to have this ultimate workshop clubhouse, finally, after all of those years. And it served exactly that purpose.

Did you ever think at that time that you were actually going to record the album at that house? Because on the second record, you actually did end up making an album in a house — at the pool house behind the Sammy Davis Jr. mansion in L.A. But for Music From Big Pink you worked in conventional studios.

It didn't have the capacity to actually make a record. We could make The Basement Tapes there because The Basement Tapes, except for some songs for other people to record, were not meant for anybody to hear but us. That seeped out through bootleggers and through whatever happened over time. But we never thought of it as a record. We thought of it as a musical experience and a great musical camaraderie, and that we were able to do stuff with Bob in such a relaxed atmosphere, in such a way that it was the clubhouse. You could do whatever whim you felt like, and we would just go there every day, hang out, make some music, and it was... I didn't know anybody that had this.

Back then, we have to remember, people didn't do this. People didn't have a setup that they could... well, Les Paul did, but it was so rare. People didn't have a facility like that. But all we had was a cheap little stereo tape recorder, an we could lay down this music with Bob for the publishing company for those purposes, and have some fun on our own. And also we could be working up the material that was going to become Music From Big Pink.

But for us to make a record with our producer John Simon, it was like, you have to go into a real recording studio to do that. We didn't have that facility up there to make it sound as beautiful as we wanted it to sound.

Me at Big Pink

One of the many things that blows me away about Music From Big Pink is how much you guys changed from when you were touring with Dylan on the ’65-'66 tour or even — I don't know if you're aware of this — but there's bootlegs floating around of Levon and The Hawks shows from '64, where you're playing in some random bar in Canada. Ronnie Hawkins described you guys as “Howlin’ Wolf on Benzedrine.” But Music From Big Pink is this folky, almost country record.

I think everything plays a part in everything. When we made this record, it had no resemblance to what we did with Ronnie Hawkins, with what we did as The Hawks, with what we did with Bob Dylan on that tour. This was a new phase, and we were presenting something that represented where we were at musically at that point, where we had grown to. We had been together for several years before we had this opportunity.

So, we thought we had woodshedded and we had found a depth in our music, and that's what Big Pink was a reflection of — the place that we had grown to taking in all of these things, taking in what we learned with Ronnie Hawkins, what we learned playing the Chitlin' Circuit down south, and the whole experience with Bob, and Bob's influence on the doors that he opened in songwriting and in music were so valuable to the whole rock ‘n’ roll movement at that time. To have a front row seat on that and be part of it, all of those things, you can't help but for them to play a big part in what you're going to do.

Was there also an element of reacting against the times? I mean, I just think about you as a guitar player, and how if you listen to those bootlegs with Dylan, you're blazing through those shows. I also love your playing on the So Many Roads record where you backed up John Hammond, along with Levon and Garth Hudson.

This is just a quick segue, but is it true that Mike Bloomfield volunteered to play piano on that record because he heard you play and he was like, "I don't need to play guitar on this record"?

Yeah, it is true. I didn't even know that Mike was a guitar player! He was just a terrific guy. He was a friend of mine, and we spent a lot of time talking about music and hanging out over the years. And the fact that he ended up playing on this record and at Newport with Bob, was just a funny coincidence. It had nothing to do with what he thought his musical journey was. I would run into Mike, and he was like, "I don't know what's going on. I don't know how I ended up here and what I'm doing." And I was like, "You don't know? Can you imagine our situation [with Dylan]? We ended up going through with it. You bailed." There was all kinds of funny stories and exchanges in that.

When I joined Ronnie Hawkins, I was 16 years old and I was in the Mississippi Delta from Canada. So, all I could do was blaze. I had to blaze or they would've sent me home, because Ronnie Hawkins told me very clearly upfront, he said, "You're too young to play with me. You're too inexperienced to play with me. You're not good enough to play with me. And you're Canadian. There's no Canadians in rockabilly bands. That doesn't fit." And I had to overcome those obstacles, and I overcame them by blazing, by playing guitar that just sounded like it was on fire.

To get back to my original question: When you listen to Music From Big Pink, your playing is so restrained. To put that out at the height of guitar heroes, where you had Hendrix and Clapton and all those people playing long solos, were you feeling like, "Well, I'm going to go in the opposite direction?”

Yeah, well, I had done that. And when I was doing it in the beginning, it was highly unusual. It was a different thing. Then, by the time we were making Music From Big Pink, it was crowded on that train. And I thought, "Everybody's doing that now." And I felt that I had also musically matured, after doing that tour of North America and around the world with Bob Dylan. I thought, "That's enough. I've been screaming at the top of my guitar neck for long enough."

Now I could afford to think about subtleties. I no longer had to prove how hard or loud I could play. I could now think about the subtleties and the sensuality in the music and my appreciation for Curtis Mayfield and Steve Cropper and these other guys. I thought, "I like that it revolves around this song. It doesn't revolve around this flashiness, these acrobatics on a guitar neck." I thought I'd outgrown that.

And the experience in the basement, too, because if you played like that in the basement, it just sounded like you were out of line. It didn't fit. It sounded like, "What's the matter with you? Go outside and get that out of your system."

There's the famous story about how Eric Clapton supposedly wanted to leave Cream when he heard Music From Big Pink because it was the opposite of what he was doing. Did he ever talk about that with you?

Many times. When I first met him, he said, "You have no idea the effect that this record has had on me musically, and consequently, I'm going to leave the group Cream." And I said, "Wait a minute! Cream makes some really interesting music, and I don't think it's just about firepower. I think that there's a sophistication in some of the musicality and some of the things," and blah, blah, blah. And he said, "No, I'm over it." I'm like, "Oh, okay." I said, "But I don't want to take responsibility for this decision. You're going to have to carry that on your own."

I want to get back to songwriting, because you were talking about how one of the reasons you wanted to set up a base out in the country is that it would give you time and space to write. I was reading in your book about how at that time, you were reading screenplays, and I think you mentioned Yojimbo and The Seven Samurai specifically. I'm curious how that influenced your songwriting.

Well, a lot of times when we were on the road and in the afternoons, whatever city we were in, I couldn't help myself — I had to find out what interesting movies were playing. I was just like a movie bug, and I was addicted to this. And I went and saw some movies, and whether it was Kurosawa or Bergman or Fellini or Wells or Ford or Hawks, whoever it was, I would go and see these pictures, and it would blow my mind.

And there were some that I would see and I was just mystified by. "How did all of this come together?" I would say 8½ played a big part in that. When I saw Fellini's 8½, I thought, "Wait a minute, how do you do that? Where does this idea come from?" You couldn't tell whether they were making it up, whether it was written. Traditionally, you couldn't tell anything.

So, in New York, there was a place on 47th Street that I talk about in my book called the Gotham Book Mart. Gregory Corso, the poet, he was living at the Chelsea Hotel where I was living at the time, and he told me about it. He said, "Oh my God, they have fantastic poetry books, and they got everything there. You should check it out." So, I went there just out of curiosity. And also I knew about 47th Street, that this was the center of the diamond world of North America from Belgium, and that fascinated me as well. I had things in my past with my family and everything that introduced me to that whole world.

So, anyway, going to this bookshop there, it was a mess. All these books were just piled on top of one another, and how anybody knew where anything was also extraordinary and kind of beautiful in its unorganized way. I was in there and just looking through books, and I came across Janus Films, who made these classic films, and they published the scripts for these classic movies.

So, I'm like, "Wait a minute. This is a breakthrough. I can now understand part of this mystery, part of this magnificence." I think if I hadn't gotten so caught up in music at such an early age and playing professionally by the time I was 16 years old, I would've probably veered into movie land. I was fascinated with the writing. I was fascinated with the director. I was like, "How do you do this?" It was something that just got ingrained in my soul. So, I started collecting these scripts.

I was there one day — this was after I'd been going there for a couple of years — and I was looking for a certain Luis Buñuel script. The Exterminating Angel, it was called. An incredible experience. And Buñuel's imagination, I thought, "Wow, there should be that imagination in songwriting." By now I'm playing with Bob Dylan, who's bringing a lot of imagination in songwriting.

So, anyway, I was in there. I want to see if they have this script. So, I say to the guy, "Do you have that?" He said, "I think so, but I don't know." And he says to the woman in there, who owns the place, who runs the place, he says, "Hey, Fanny, do you know where the script for Buñuel's Exterminating Angel might be?" She said, "Yeah, look in that pile over there in the corner. I think it's about halfway down in that pile." And he goes, unloads these books. There it is.

So I'm like, "Wow." I got the script and I'm leaving, and I'm like, "Thank you, Fanny." And so then I go off, I'm reading Buñuel's things, watching these movies and thinking, "I love the idea that everything doesn't have to be put one foot in front of the other. It doesn't have to be playing into people's limitations and everything. You can have such imagination in this."

So, all of these things are breaking down rules for me. And I go and drive back up to Woodstock, and I ended up writing “The Weight,” and with this character in it called Fanny, and I think that I'm writing a tribute to Luis Buñuel's imagination.

In your book you talk about how “The Weight” was initially a “fall back song” in your mind. It didn’t stand out in your mind.

After The Basement Tapes, where there was all kinds of imagination and madness involved in some of the songwriting, that loosened up things. And in the lyrics that I wrote, like “Chest Fever” and everything, it's playing by the rules of The Basement Tapes in that.

When I wrote “The Weight,” I thought, "Now I've gone too far. Nobody's going to understand this, even me." So, it was hard to think, "Guys, I've written a song here that really could change things or make a difference,” or anything like that. I thought, "It's too outside the lines here, but we'll keep it as a backup in case one of the other songs doesn't work out."

We didn't run over it very much, even in the basement at Big Pink, this song. I don't know if I was a little embarrassed about saying, "Hey guys, here's a song that we should learn, and I've got these ideas of what we can do with the harmony and how these things happen and that you will change instruments” and all of this stuff. But I did. And everybody embraced that. Nobody said, "What is this supposed to be?" We were learning stuff and thinking, "Well, we'll learn it and we'll figure it out later."

When we went into the studio and after we recorded, I don't know, maybe two or three songs, we thought we would give this a whirl, and we ran. I had this arrangement in my mind, and I asked Garth to play piano on it and Richard to play organ. I had this whole kind of visual thing in mind. And John Simon was helping very much in getting all of these pieces so they fit together. Once we ran through it, we thought, "Whoa, that feels pretty good. Let's record it and see how it comes back to us." See, sometimes you would record something to really be able to tell whether it was translating or not.

So, we played it down a couple of times and they got a sound on it and everything, and it was like, "Oh, I think we're getting somewhere here." But they kept stopping and starting with things, technical things, "Oh, wait a minute, guys, we got a microphone and it's not working. And wait a minute, we got a patch bay..." There was stuff that kept stopping us. Now they're coming on and they're saying, "Okay, take nine. Take 10." And it's like, "It's them that's the problem. It's not us." Finally, they say, "Okay, here we go, take 14." And by then I say, "Yeah, yeah, yeah." That's what I'm referring to [on the box set outtake], "Can we just play the song and you guys figure out your problems?"

So, we played the song. We had gone in and listened to a rough take of it and thought, "Oh, okay, well, what we should do is this and that." And I was saying, "Let's lay back on this thing. Let's not make it rush. Let's not feel nervous about it. I think part of this story and this feeling is kind of almost that it pulls back a little bit, and that invites you in." So, we got our ducks in a row and our communication together on that, and we went, and then we recorded it and went in, and John Simon says, "Guys, wait till you hear this."

We went in and we heard a complete take of it, and there's no overdubs, there's no nothing, it's just us playing the song. And it was like, "That's exactly what I'm talking about, and I think Luis Buñuel would be proud of this."

Self-Promotion Time

Over at Uproxx, I wrote about the new “surprise” Jack White album, which I must declare (rock critic cliché alert) as his best and more enjoyable music in quite some time. If you have longed for a Jack White record that sounds live and raw and like it was written five minutes before it was recorded, this one is for you.

Over on Never Ending Stories, I recorded an emergency podcast with Ian Grant about the trailer for the new Bob Dylan biopic, A Complete Unknown. My quick take: Timothée Chalamet’s Dylan phrasing is decent, but he’s no John C. Reilly.

My latest book has been out for two months! Thanks to everyone who has checked it out so far!