Another figure who looms large in your life, and
most recently with The Irishman, is film director
Martin Scorsese. Did the pair of you hit it off
instantly when you first met in the seventies?
I just met him in passing to begin with. It was after
he’d made Mean Streets [1973], and they did
a screening of it for me. Afterwards he showed up
to say hello. It was obvious watching that movie
that there was talent
lurking in there – the
attitude, the use of music,
Robert De Niro in one
of his first real roles,
everything that Marty did.
There was so much to be
respected in his knowledge of film as well. Later
on, when I asked him if he’d be interested in
directing The Last Waltz, I realised that I really
liked him.One of the songs on Sinematic, Beautiful Madness,
alludes to the two of you sharing a bachelor pad.
We shared a house up in Beverly
Hills, then we had a place in
New York, a hotel suite that we
shared for a couple of years. Were
we a bad influence on each other?
I don’t think that we were doing
anything bad to one another. In our
friendship and everything else, wewere trying to look out for the other person. It’s
just that we weren’t that good at it.After Scorsese directed The Last Waltz, you threw
yourself into feature films, writing, producing and
starring in the 1980 film Carny. Was that an
enjoyable experience, or a bit of a culture shock?
All of the above. Some of it was amazing and someof it was me biting off more than I could chew.
There were a lot of things to overcome in that
experiment. It was a tough combination: real-life
carnies, real-life freaks, real movie people, actors,
this whole thing. There were hugely conflicting
lifestyles among all of these people. And somehow,
in the midst of it all, I became the middle man.
Then after all of that I ended up
doing music for the movie with Alex
North, who was somebody that I
thought was amazing [North’s film
scores include A Streetcar Named
Desire, Spartacus and Who’s Afraid Of
Virginia Woolf?]. So the experience
was phenomenal, but I didn’t knowenough going in. It’s instinct. Sometimes you
gamble on somebody and it works out, and
sometimes it doesn’t live up to what you hoped. It’s
like with Once Were Brothers, where I gambled on
this young director [Daniel Roher], who was only
twenty-four when he started working on it. The
producers thought I was crazy, but I said: “I’ve got a
feeling about this and it’s what I want to do.” And
because it was my thing,
they couldn’t argue too
much. So that worked out.
But Carny was a combination
of a lot of madness.Is there a parallel to be
drawn with The Band there too, in some ways?
There could be. Maybe I was still on the
wavelength and I didn’t know it.Do you ever ponder how The Band’s story might
have turned out had addiction not taken hold?
To be honest, I don’t have a lot of time for
pondering. I’m really busy and more concerned
with working on what I’m doing today and what
I’ve got to do tomorrow. I have such tremendous,
deep memories of my experiences with these guys.
But that was then and this is now.Sinematic is out now via UMC. The Band: 50th
GET Anniversary Edition is out on Nov 15 via UMG
TY
“I never had an issue with Levon [Helm]. He had
his own issues, most of them with himself.”
On reflection...
London, June 1971.CLASSICROCKMAGAZINE.COM 63ROBBIE ROBERTSON