What made you want to move from New York to
Hollywood to record the follow-up, The Band?
It had nothing to do with Hollywood. There was
a lot of snow in Woodstock and it was slowing
down the process. So we thought how about we
go somewhere where it isn’t going to be snowing
and we can get the equipment, all live together and
lock in again. So finding somewhere on the West
Coast was just a convenience. When we decided
not to use a proper studio, Capitol Records in Los
Angeles said: “This is the most ridiculous thing.
Why are you doing this?” But because of the
acclaim that Music From Big Pink got, I was able to
use that to insist that this was something we just
had to do. So they helped us get the equipment
over to [legendary entertainer] Sammy Davis Jr’s
pool house, where we could do this experiment.You wanted to have a “woody, thuddy sound” on
The Band.
Yeah, we’ve referred to it like
that. We wanted to avoid the
formality of normal studios,
where they have these
particular surfaces in there.
Music From Big Pink came out
pretty good, but we took it
a step further on The Band,
because there was no recording
engineer and no studio at all.
Again, when that record came
out it didn’t resemble anything in
the world. So it became something
with its own identity and character.
And that’s what I was shooting for.
We tried to shut ourselves off fromthe rest of the world all the way up to Shangri-La
[the Malibu studio], when we made Northern Lights- Southern Cross [1975]. The Band was like a table
with five legs that really stood strong and
supported one another. And, as it says in the
documentary, if one of the legs gets broken it
doesn’t sit straight any more.
You wrote all of the songs on The Band,
sometimes along with another member
of the group, but you don’t sing any of
them. What was it like hearing Levon’s
spectacular vocals on The Night They
Drove Old Dixie Down, for example?
In making this record, I was casting
these guys to play a part. I knew
Rick had to sing The Unfaithful
Servant, I knew Richard had to sing
Across The Great Divide, and that
Levon could only do The Night They
Drove Old Dixie Down. I wanted to
write something that Levon couldsing better than anybody else in the world. And
I was right about that.After addressing the subject in Testimony, has
making the documentary somehow helped you
come to terms with the difficult relationship that
you had with Levon in later years?
That wasn’t an obligation of mine. I never had an
issue with Levon. He had his own issues, and most
of his issues were with himself. Sometimes he
turned it on Rick, sometimes he turned it on
Richard or Garth, and sometimes, later on – by
that I mean ten or fifteen years after The Band
wasn’t together any more – he turned it on me.
And I wasn’t surprised by that. I never even
responded to it, because I knew Levon and the trip
that he was on. He was having a tough time, and
he blamed me. He was so great at playing and
singing, but he wasn’t great at taking responsibility
for stuff. It was his thing, and I didn’t really play
a part in it, other than the fact that he pointed those
arrows at me. Continued on page 63GET
TYx (^2) ;
(^) TO
P (^) LE
FT:
(^) SH
UT
TER
STO
CK
“We’d [The Band] been working with Bob Dylan,
so breaking the rules wasn’t anything new.
We’d been breaking rules all of our life.”
Robertson with The Band at
The Last Waltz concert.
Van Morrison, Bob Dylan and
Robertson performing I Shall Be
Released, the finale of The Last
Waltz concert.
Director Martin^ Scorsese^ (left)^
and producer^ Robbie^ Robertson^
in France to present^ The^ Last^
Waltz at the^31 st^ Cannes^
International Film Festival.
60 CLASSICROCKMAGAZINE.COM
ROBBIE ROBERTSON