Speaker 1: Pushkin, Pushkin. Hey everyone, this is a bit of a
Speaker 1: special episode of Broken Record, not just because it features
Speaker 1: Rick Rubin, Malcolm Gladwell, and Bruce Headlam all at once,
Speaker 1: but because it happened at the spiritual home Shangri La.
Speaker 1: Of today's guest, that's the band's Robbie Robertson, who reminisces
Speaker 1: about converting a home in Malibu into the now legendary
Speaker 1: recording studio run by Rick, before moving on to discussing
Speaker 1: the band's early days as backup for a rockabilly singer
Speaker 1: when they were known as the Hawks, and they also
Speaker 1: discussed Robbie's longtime work with director Martin Scorsese, which earned
Speaker 1: him an Oscar nomination at this year's Academy Awards. We
Speaker 1: should also note that if you liked this episode, there's
Speaker 1: a new documentary called Once We're Brothers, Robbie Robertson and
Speaker 1: the Band that will be coming out in theaters on
Speaker 1: February twenty first. This is Broken Record liner notes for
Speaker 1: the digital Age.
Speaker 2: I'm justin Mischmer.
Speaker 1: Here's Rick Rubin, Malcolm Gladwell, and Bruce Headlam from Shangri
Speaker 1: La speaking with the studios architect Robbie Robertson.
Speaker 3: We had a fantastic day the other day here, and
Speaker 3: when I was telling the stories of Shangri Law, you know,
Speaker 3: the stories.
Speaker 2: He envisioned this place and built it and it was unbelievable.
Speaker 3: And it was mine. You know. The other guys in
Speaker 3: the band thought this was a good idea. But from
Speaker 3: Big Pink to Sammy Davis Junior's house to the Wars,
Speaker 3: we made these wrecks in not in studios and other
Speaker 3: places where there was an atmosphere and that could be
Speaker 3: our atmosphere, fear and our sound, you know, and everything
Speaker 3: was not on somebody else's way of doing somebody else's wavelength.
Speaker 3: You know. You would go into the studio and there'd
Speaker 3: be these used to be these Union guys, and they'd
Speaker 3: be like, oh, it looks like it's lunchtime. We're like,
Speaker 3: what are you talking about lunchtime? Where were you know?
Speaker 3: We're about to do something, and and they'd be there
Speaker 3: and I'd be like, I don't know, this should be louder.
Speaker 3: Don't touch that, you know, So I don't want that.
Speaker 3: I don't I don't want to do that. So I said,
Speaker 3: what we're going to do is we're going to make
Speaker 3: these clubhouse, these workshop, these studio things. That is our
Speaker 3: world and our music, our sound. And whether it was
Speaker 3: true or or not, I believed that it gave it
Speaker 3: a character and a thing, which it did for better
Speaker 3: or worse.
Speaker 2: What's interesting about that too, is that now it's become
Speaker 2: more the norm. Yeah, that said, when you did it technologically,
Speaker 2: it was much more difficult to do. Like, when you
Speaker 2: did it you needed big studio equipment. Like today people
Speaker 2: can do it on their laptop, so they could it's
Speaker 2: easier to make that jump. But when you did it,
Speaker 2: the infrastructure involved was not easy to pull off.
Speaker 3: It was unheard of except for Les Paul. Les Paul said,
Speaker 3: I'm going to build a studio at my house, and
Speaker 3: I'm gonna build an echo chamber into the side of
Speaker 3: this hill, right and he was going to do all
Speaker 3: of these things. I had an argument the other day
Speaker 3: with Van Morrison about being able to do this kind
Speaker 3: of thing, and because he was saying, I only like
Speaker 3: to play live just with my band, and I go
Speaker 3: in and we sing and they play this song and
Speaker 3: we kept capture a moment. We've all done that. I
Speaker 3: know it really well. I played ricks some music the
Speaker 3: other day. That was all like first or second takes,
Speaker 3: and it was you know.
Speaker 2: Songs you've heard, Yeah, songs you've heard a lot.
Speaker 3: So anyway, Savannah saying, it's got to be live and
Speaker 3: it's got to be bah and that's the way it
Speaker 3: used to be and it's the way it Choob and
Speaker 3: I said, well, what about Les Paul. He overdubbed, he
Speaker 3: made things, he played on top of himself, he double
Speaker 3: track things, He invented it. So so Van says, I know,
Speaker 3: but he was magic.
Speaker 4: Wait you made you did? You recorded at Sammy Davis
Speaker 4: Junior's house.
Speaker 3: Yes, we made the band album, the Brown Album. Uh.
Speaker 3: And we rented Sammy Davis Junior's house in the Hollywood
Speaker 3: it's up Sunset Plaza up in the Hollywood Hills, and
Speaker 3: we all stayed in the house with the family. And
Speaker 3: we turned the pool house where he used to have
Speaker 3: his parties with Frank Sinatra and the rat Back and
Speaker 3: all these people. We turned that pool house into a studio.
Speaker 3: And the record company thought this was the worst idea
Speaker 3: they ever heard. They thought this was ridiculous. He said,
Speaker 3: drive fifteen minutes. We have the best studio in the world.
Speaker 3: Here Frank's upper records here right, all of this stuff,
Speaker 3: and I was like, no, no, no, this is a
Speaker 3: different thing. And finally they were like, okay, okay, I
Speaker 3: guess I don't know what you're doing and it's probably
Speaker 3: going to be bad. But didn't show up. Sammy Davis Junior,
Speaker 3: he owned, he still owned the house. He didn't live there.
Speaker 4: I was imagining him like live there, stepping in on
Speaker 4: one of your recordings halls.
Speaker 3: But everything in the house was built lower. You go
Speaker 3: into the bathroom and the sink was down here, and
Speaker 3: it was everything was built to his specifications, you know.
Speaker 3: And and it seemed like this is great, this is
Speaker 3: great Sammy's world, you know, amazing. And so we recorded
Speaker 3: the album there and then we mix it, or we're
Speaker 3: going to mix the record. And there's this guy in
Speaker 3: New York, Tony May was his name, and he had
Speaker 3: mixed the Isley Brothers. It's your thing, do what you
Speaker 3: want to do. So it was such a great sounding record,
Speaker 3: we said, wow, let's see if we can get Tony
Speaker 3: May to mix this. And he worked with Phil Ramone
Speaker 3: and all these people there. So anyway, he comes in
Speaker 3: and he puts up the tapes and everything, and he says,
Speaker 3: these tapes are awful. I'm gonna have to do a
Speaker 3: lot of work on this. And I thought, hmm, I
Speaker 3: don't know if I like that, you know. So anyway,
Speaker 3: he did a mix that was not what I wanted
Speaker 3: at all. It's not the way I heard it at all.
Speaker 3: So anyway, we're like, thanks, Tony, so you you know.
Speaker 3: And and we.
Speaker 4: Saw on which songs are these?
Speaker 3: These were on the band album It was the night
Speaker 3: they drove Old Dixie down up on Crippled Creek, you know,
Speaker 3: Whispering Pines.
Speaker 4: One was wrong with his mixes.
Speaker 3: His mixes were trying to make this slick and bright,
Speaker 3: and there was a woodiness to it. There was a
Speaker 3: muddiness to it that suited the music. It was earthy
Speaker 3: and I wanted that right. But he didn't get the jokes.
Speaker 3: So that was okay. So I went and mixed the
Speaker 3: album with a guy, another guy at the old Jerry
Speaker 3: Ragovoice Hit Factory in New York. This guy mixed the album.
Speaker 3: We mixed at the guys in the band. We were
Speaker 3: all in there moving the faders and got it the
Speaker 3: way that I wanted. So we get it and then
Speaker 3: it's like Okay, the guy, the mastering guy, his name
Speaker 3: is Bob Ludwig. You got to get him to master
Speaker 3: your record. So we take the record to Bob Ludwig
Speaker 3: and he puts it, you know, he puts on the
Speaker 3: tape of the mixes and everything, and he says, oh boy,
Speaker 3: He's like Tony May. He's like, I don't know. I'm
Speaker 3: gonna try. I'll see if I can fix this or
Speaker 3: save this. And I'm like, hmm, that's really depressing. So
Speaker 3: I go and I tell the other guys. I said,
Speaker 3: I don't know, we might have done this all wrong.
Speaker 3: Everybody's saying it's it's terror carrible and that, you know.
Speaker 3: So the next I don't know. A couple of days later,
Speaker 3: Bob Ludwick caused me and he says, I am such
Speaker 3: an idiot. I am such a fool. I didn't get it.
Speaker 3: I so get it. This is maybe the most interesting
Speaker 3: record I've ever heard. He said, I am so sorry.
Speaker 3: And he told me, Bob Ludwick, he said, I made
Speaker 3: the same mistake when sly Stone brought me there's a
Speaker 3: riot going on. I thought that that was a big
Speaker 3: mistake too, and he said, and then I've realized it
Speaker 3: you know, I had to accept it the way that
Speaker 3: I accepted your record. And so I was like, because
Speaker 3: I thought he was right, you know, And if he
Speaker 3: had a stayed with that, I don't know what would
Speaker 3: have happened. So he you know, he mastered and it
Speaker 3: hardly did anything to it in the mastering, and it
Speaker 3: was just one of those things. It was a homemade thing.
Speaker 3: It did have that character to it, and that was
Speaker 3: part of its specialness.
Speaker 4: He came very close to ruining two of the great masterpieces.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, I do remember.
Speaker 5: Actually the first songs he wrote, I goes for Ronnie Hawkins.
Speaker 5: What were they like?
Speaker 3: Well?
Speaker 2: What were they?
Speaker 3: Well? One of the reasons he hired me. I wrote
Speaker 3: a couple of songs for him when I was fifteen
Speaker 3: years old because I heard him say that I need
Speaker 3: some songs, and I was trying to figure out how
Speaker 3: I could crash into this world of Southern rock and roll.
Speaker 3: That's the real thing. These guys are from the holy
Speaker 3: land in the South where this music grows out of
Speaker 3: the ground. So I've got this whole fantasy in my
Speaker 3: mind and everything, and these guys can do it. And
Speaker 3: they were all from the South, and they sounded that
Speaker 3: way and all of it. It's just okay. And I'm
Speaker 3: up in Canada, so you know what I mean. It
Speaker 3: feels like such a distance and I'm trying to figure
Speaker 3: out a way. How can I become a part of this.
Speaker 3: How can I get into this club and they'll accept me.
Speaker 3: So I hear them say I need some So I
Speaker 3: go off and I write a couple of songs.
Speaker 5: Where are you when you write these songs?
Speaker 3: In Toronto, in Cabbage Town?
Speaker 4: You're in high school?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I was fifteen.
Speaker 5: Did you know anything about writing songs?
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, I had written some songs already and this
Speaker 3: was just something you just kind of boosted your game up.
Speaker 3: You know. As we go along, certain things happen and
Speaker 3: it makes you think, Okay, now I got to take
Speaker 3: on this challenge and if I can, if I can
Speaker 3: win that war, will I'll now be this will be
Speaker 3: my starting place instead of your something.
Speaker 4: What did you hear Ronnie Hawkins say he needed some
Speaker 4: new songs?
Speaker 3: Well, we I had a band called Robbie and the Robots,
Speaker 3: and we were an opening, you know, act for Ronnie
Speaker 3: Hawkins and the Hawks on a weekend and a dance
Speaker 3: out in the West End of Toronto at an arena.
Speaker 3: So we went on and played.
Speaker 4: You're fifteen Yeah for Ronnie Hawkins.
Speaker 3: And Ronnie and the other guys. They thought, Wow, these
Speaker 3: kids are not bad, you know, they're not too bad,
Speaker 3: and that was all I needed to hear. So I
Speaker 3: was just trying to get some of it. So I
Speaker 3: was hanging around, and then they went on and killed it.
Speaker 3: I had never heard anything like that before, that far,
Speaker 3: that up close. You know, I just heard other bands.
Speaker 3: I'm from Toronto, right and or whatever. This was something
Speaker 3: and you had to get into clubs to really hear
Speaker 3: these people play. But they were doing a thing on
Speaker 3: a weekend. So I see them play and I'm like,
Speaker 3: this is unbelievable. A real rockabilly band, right like Carl
Speaker 3: Perkins and you know Elvis and you know Roy Orbison,
Speaker 3: like you're right out of that school. So I think,
Speaker 3: and the energy and the excitement and the music, and
Speaker 3: Ronnie was an amazing showm in it and he always
Speaker 3: wanted to have killer musicians and they were great. So
Speaker 3: after they played, I was just hanging around trying to
Speaker 3: get some of it to rub off on me, you know,
Speaker 3: some of that musicality. And so I was trying to
Speaker 3: be helpful and hanging around, and then I, you know,
Speaker 3: and and they ended up liking me, and they said,
Speaker 3: all right, you know at the hotel, why don't you
Speaker 3: come by? And I would just try to try to
Speaker 3: make myself useful, you know, and somebody needed a new
Speaker 3: string put on the guitar or whatever anything, you know.
Speaker 3: So I I was hanging around, and I was hanging
Speaker 3: around as much as I could without getting in the way.
Speaker 3: And one day I hear Ronnie Hawk and say, I
Speaker 3: got to make a new record, and I need some
Speaker 3: new songs, you know. So I went home and I
Speaker 3: wrote two songs and brought him back to him, said
Speaker 3: I wrote a couple of songs. I don't know if
Speaker 3: they're you know what you're looking for. So we played
Speaker 3: him the played the new songs, and he said, damn son,
Speaker 3: I'm going to record both of those.
Speaker 4: What was the best of them?
Speaker 3: They weren't any good, you know. I was just trying
Speaker 3: to get in the door. So so I wrote this
Speaker 3: song called someone like You. I think didn't Adele steal
Speaker 3: that title from me on the so anyway, so he
Speaker 3: records the songs, he records, the album comes back to Toronto.
Speaker 3: They're playing at a club, the l Cock Door in Toronto.
Speaker 3: Brings me the album with the songs on it, and
Speaker 3: I'm like cutting my finger trying to get this album
Speaker 3: opened to look and see it on the song credits
Speaker 3: that everything. There's the two songs, and there's my name,
Speaker 3: but it's my name and somebody else's name. And I said,
Speaker 3: who's Levy? I didn't there was no Levy there when
Speaker 3: I wrote these songs. Lev It was Morris Levy, who
Speaker 3: owned the record company Roulette Records that Ronnie was on.
Speaker 3: So I'm like, this, God, how can he just put
Speaker 3: his name on there? So Ronnie's kind of saying, son,
Speaker 3: in this business some you know. He was just giving
Speaker 3: me the old shit happens kind of story, and I'm like,
Speaker 3: this is just wrong though he wasn't. And I'm telling
Speaker 3: Ronnie he wasn't even there when I wrote them. I'm
Speaker 3: just I'm a kid, what do I know? And Ronnie's like, listen, Son,
Speaker 3: these guys, these guys up there in New York, and
Speaker 3: you don't want to mess around with them. They're the
Speaker 3: kind of people you know that you know you're get
Speaker 3: in their way, you know, and they find you in
Speaker 3: the river. He's giving you this whole story. I'm like,
Speaker 3: in the river, he wasn't even there. So anyway, sometime later,
Speaker 3: Ronnie says to me, if you can write songs I
Speaker 3: can write, maybe you'd be good at hearing what I
Speaker 3: was good. So I'm gonna take you to New York
Speaker 3: and I'm gonna take you to the Brill Building and
Speaker 3: we're gonna meet all the songwriters and you're gonna listen
Speaker 3: to their songs and see if they something that would
Speaker 3: be good for me to record. So anyway, we go
Speaker 3: and I meet Doc Palmis and Mark Schuman, I meet
Speaker 3: Lidburn Stroller, I meet Otis Blackwell. It's in my book, Rick.
Speaker 3: When you read that and you hear this whole story,
Speaker 3: it's amazing. Otis Blackwell and Titus Turner, all of these guys,
Speaker 3: and Otis Blackwell is trying to think of a song
Speaker 3: that might be good for wrong. I'm in his little
Speaker 3: room and he's playing a thing on the piano and
Speaker 3: he's accompanying himself telling me how Colonel Tom Parker and
Speaker 3: Elvis fucked him on the song he wrote, Don't Be Cruel.
Speaker 3: While he's telling me the story and accompanying himself on
Speaker 3: the piano, right, and it's like this is amazing, you know.
Speaker 3: And then Lieber and Stoller are playing me songs and
Speaker 3: I'm like, wow, that is a liber in Stoller and
Speaker 3: I'm saying it's great. Do you haven't any more? Then?
Speaker 3: And finally Jerry Lieber says to me, and who are
Speaker 3: you again? And I said, oh, I'm just you know
Speaker 3: what I was like, I was in heaven. And Doc
Speaker 3: Palmis and Lieber and Stoller and Thomas and Schumann went
Speaker 3: on to be friends of mine for the rest of
Speaker 3: their life, as long as they live. We were still
Speaker 3: in contact and friends of mine from that very early point.
Speaker 3: So we are recording, I mean, I'm listening to songs.
Speaker 3: Ronnie says, well, we have to go up to the
Speaker 3: record company and we have to see Morris about some
Speaker 3: things and everything. I think, great, we'll get this songwriting
Speaker 3: thing straightened out once and for all. Right, So we
Speaker 3: go up to this office and it's like a scene
Speaker 3: right out of that Damien Runyon would have written. Is
Speaker 3: there are blondes on the telephone with their hair perfectly
Speaker 3: over one eye, right out of a movie, right, And
Speaker 3: then there's these guys in mohair suits with pock marks
Speaker 3: and a bulge in their you know, in their suit
Speaker 3: Like on this one side, I'm thinking, Wow, these people
Speaker 3: think it's real, you know, they're living in this thing
Speaker 3: and it maybe it is real. Right. So then the
Speaker 3: door opens and Marrie Levy says, Ronnie, Ronnie, I love
Speaker 3: this guy, Ronnie, come on in. And I think what
Speaker 3: happens to gangsters when they're young that their voice goes
Speaker 3: like that. All these gangsters seem to talk this way.
Speaker 2: How old was mars Levy at this time? What do
Speaker 2: you say?
Speaker 3: I don't know. I would say late thirties.
Speaker 2: Wow, how old are you?
Speaker 3: I'm a fifty and a half. I'm by now, I'm
Speaker 3: pushing sixteen, right. So anyway, so we go in and
Speaker 3: Ronnie Hawkins is doing his thing. He's doing the camera
Speaker 3: walk and stuff, and Morris just loves him. So he says, Morris,
Speaker 3: this is this kid I was telling you about that
Speaker 3: I think has a lot of potential. Right. So Morris
Speaker 3: is there and he finally looks at me. He says, yeah.
Speaker 3: He said, if you have to do any time, it'd
Speaker 3: be good to have him with you. And I'm like,
Speaker 3: what is it? He means if you have to go
Speaker 3: to prison, he could be your boy. And I'm like,
Speaker 3: I'm going to forego this songwriting problem completely. I can't
Speaker 3: believe that's the joke that he's telling you. So anyway,
Speaker 3: after this stuff and we and we did find some
Speaker 3: songs that he recorded, and then a few months later
Speaker 3: he calls me and tells me to come down to
Speaker 3: Arkansas to try out because I'm getting better and better
Speaker 3: as a guitar player. And he does think, I don't
Speaker 3: know what it is, but this guy's got something or another.
Speaker 3: And then I go on this mission to prove because
Speaker 3: at sixteen years old, I don't have the experience. I'm
Speaker 3: not a good enough musician yet. And I'm from Canada.
Speaker 3: It's no Canadians and rockabilly bands, so it was unheard of.
Speaker 3: So I had a big mountain to climb and that
Speaker 3: and I went down there and I ended up winning
Speaker 3: that battle.
Speaker 2: How much did you practice back then? Do you remember,
Speaker 2: like to get in your mind to get the job.
Speaker 2: What was it like.
Speaker 3: I practiced till my fingers were bleeding, and I woke
Speaker 3: up many mornings and the bed beside me was my guitar.
Speaker 3: So I just thought I can't. I can't let this
Speaker 3: go by because just to convince my mother too, at
Speaker 3: sixteen years old, I'm leaving school and I'm going to
Speaker 3: the Mississippi Delta to join up with a rock and
Speaker 3: roll band. You know, She's like, what you know, she
Speaker 3: doesn't even understand what this could possibly mean, except she
Speaker 3: could see in my eyes this thing that was so
Speaker 3: driven and that it was I And it was like,
Speaker 3: if I don't try, if I don't do this, I'm
Speaker 3: gonna be sorry the rest of my life. This is
Speaker 3: the biggest opportunity it you know, it couldn't have been
Speaker 3: in my mind a bigger, you know, bigger thing. So
Speaker 3: and I went down there and Ronnie Hawkins was like, oh, Son,
Speaker 3: you're too young, you're too good. I don't know if
Speaker 3: this is going to work out. And I was like,
Speaker 3: you'll see, and I play. I lied about my age,
Speaker 3: you know, for you know, five years.
Speaker 4: Did you did you look older than fifteen at fifteen?
Speaker 3: I was sixteen now sixteen? And Ronnie Hawkins actually said
Speaker 3: to me, he would say, son, can you do something?
Speaker 3: Can you shave? Can you I didn't even shave at
Speaker 3: the time, and I didn't know what to do. And
Speaker 3: I got an electric razor and I started shaving nothing,
Speaker 3: and my face was raw from this electrics. All it
Speaker 3: did was make me red. It didn't make me grow
Speaker 3: any whiskers or nothing. And so for the first while
Speaker 3: where we played, I would stand kind of back a
Speaker 3: little bit in the dark, you know, and because there
Speaker 3: would be lights and everything, and I knew just to
Speaker 3: get out of the way of the lights. And then
Speaker 3: between sets that we would play, I would just go
Speaker 3: in the back room and stay there till it was
Speaker 3: time to go on again, because there was club guys saying, hey,
Speaker 3: I don't want you to get me shut down to Ronnie,
Speaker 3: of course, and Ronnie was like, no, no, don't worry
Speaker 3: about it all. Oh blah blah blah blah. And he
Speaker 3: had to do all this double talking and things, and
Speaker 3: he would say, no, no, no, it's like we call
Speaker 3: him babyface. He just he just looks young, you know,
Speaker 3: he's old enough, he just looks young. But Levon he
Speaker 3: joined Ronnie when he was eighteen, after he graduated from
Speaker 3: high school, and he looked very young, and they got
Speaker 3: away with it. So he thought, well, if he could
Speaker 3: get it away with it from him, you know, And
Speaker 3: then a year after I was with Ronnie Hawkins. All
Speaker 3: the guys from the South except Levon were leaving one
Speaker 3: by one, and then one by one we were hiring Canadians.
Speaker 3: We hired Rick Danko who was from Simcoe, Ontario, then
Speaker 3: Richard Manuel who was from Stratford, Ontario, then Garths Hudson
Speaker 3: who was from London, Ontario. And they all had their
Speaker 3: own bands, so we were, you know, stealing the leaders
Speaker 3: of all of these bands. I was one of those too,
Speaker 3: and that Levon, and I said, we got to get
Speaker 3: that kid. He's you know, he's got potential.
Speaker 1: We'll be back with more from Robbie Robertson after the break.
Speaker 1: We're back with more from Robbie robertson.
Speaker 5: When and all this did you start writing the music
Speaker 5: that became what we know as band music. Not the
Speaker 5: actual songs, but when did you start hitting on those ideas.
Speaker 3: When the Hawks were the personnel the people that went
Speaker 3: on to become the band. At one point, we outgrew
Speaker 3: the music that we were doing with Ronnie Hawkins, and
Speaker 3: we were experimenting with other kinds of songs and and
Speaker 3: other kinds of music and reaching deeper and getting better
Speaker 3: and better and finally it's you know, we couldn't stay
Speaker 3: in that place, so we left Ronnie Hawkins. So when
Speaker 3: we left Ronnie Hawkins, the idea was, Okay, we're going
Speaker 3: to go out and we're going to play some gigs
Speaker 3: and everything, and then we're going to get a record deal,
Speaker 3: you know, and become who we are, you know. And
Speaker 3: so I started messing around with writing some ideas because
Speaker 3: I was the only one that thought about songwriting in
Speaker 3: the group at that time, because I had written songs before.
Speaker 3: It was kind of like, okay, I guess someone's got
Speaker 3: to do it. I got to do it right, And
Speaker 3: so I started writing some things then. And then just
Speaker 3: as we were getting a record deal and starting to
Speaker 3: do something, this this fellow named Bob Dylan came along
Speaker 3: and asked if we would help take him electric and
Speaker 3: be his band on a world tour. So that kind of,
Speaker 3: you know, it just put everything on hold a little bit.
Speaker 3: But it was like a phenomenal experience what this guy
Speaker 3: was doing at the time. This is just when he
Speaker 3: was going from being the you know, the the man
Speaker 3: in folk songwriting to wanting to do something else and
Speaker 3: wanting to play make music with other musicians and not
Speaker 3: just him in a guitar and harmonica, and that was
Speaker 3: really interesting to me. He was really interesting to me.
Speaker 3: I loved this idea. Some of the other guys were like, hmm,
Speaker 3: I'm not sure about this. You know, we were on
Speaker 3: the from the other side of the tracks. We weren't
Speaker 3: from the folk music world at all. So anyway, it
Speaker 3: was like an interesting experiment in terror playing with Bob Dylan,
Speaker 3: and we toured with him all over North America, all
Speaker 3: over Australia, all over Europe, and people booed and threw
Speaker 3: stuff at us every night, just about everywhere we played,
Speaker 3: and you couldn't help but think, well, who else has
Speaker 3: been through this? Who else knows how this feels. There
Speaker 3: wasn't anybody on that list. I didn't know that this
Speaker 3: had ever happened before, and I'm sure, but not with
Speaker 3: somebody who's on the crest of changing music forever and
Speaker 3: writing songs like nobody's ever written before, and all of
Speaker 3: this stuff that every night we get booed and we
Speaker 3: get through this whole thing alive. So after we got
Speaker 3: through it alive, then it was really time for me
Speaker 3: to start thinking about writing songs because it was like,
Speaker 3: we've done the experiment with Bob Dylan. Now we got
Speaker 3: to get back to doing our own thing. And that's
Speaker 3: when we were doing the basement tapes at Big Pink,
Speaker 3: and it's where, you know, when I started writing and
Speaker 3: thinking about who are we, what do we sound like?
Speaker 3: What are these stories?
Speaker 4: He's yeah, you said that Bob Dylan was interesting to you.
Speaker 4: Why were you interesting to Bob Dylan?
Speaker 3: Probably because we were a real band, a real band
Speaker 3: that played. We weren't some studio musicians that you could hire.
Speaker 3: We were a band that knew how to play with
Speaker 3: one another and had a language already that we spoke
Speaker 3: with one another. And so this unit coming in that
Speaker 3: had a sound, that had a thing amongst them, you know,
Speaker 3: it was like something ready made. In the beginning, when
Speaker 3: I first met with him, he was trying to hire
Speaker 3: me away from the group to play guitar with him
Speaker 3: and some other musicians, and so I had to say, no, no,
Speaker 3: I'm with a group. We're a brotherhood.
Speaker 4: So he was fine with did he.
Speaker 3: Know he wasn't fine in the beginning, And he was like, no, no,
Speaker 3: I got some other guys and you know that are
Speaker 3: really good and everything, and I was like, then, I
Speaker 3: can't do it, you know. And so so he came around.
Speaker 2: Was there a tryout or he just said, let's do.
Speaker 3: This, you know what the tryout was? So I played
Speaker 3: two jobs with him and I said, I can only
Speaker 3: do it if Levon is there too, and and so yeah,
Speaker 3: he said to me, he's a drummer. He said, is
Speaker 3: he as good? There was this big studio drummer at
Speaker 3: the time, Bobby Greg was his name, and he said,
Speaker 3: is he as good as Bobby Greg? I said, oh no,
Speaker 3: he's better than Bobby Greg, you know, and he said,
Speaker 3: oh okay. So anyway, we Levon and I played with
Speaker 3: him and some other musicians for just two jobs we
Speaker 3: said we would do. And it was at Forest Hills
Speaker 3: in New York and the Hollywood Bowl and they and
Speaker 3: they booed, you know, it was like whoa, what's that about?
Speaker 3: And charge the stage and I hated it.
Speaker 4: What was your reaction to that?
Speaker 3: We just played louder and they hated it more. And
Speaker 3: I thought, if Bob can handle us, we can handle this.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 3: And so we just kept going and going and it
Speaker 3: was hurtful. And then there was a point in this
Speaker 3: tour because sometimes they would tape the shows, you know,
Speaker 3: on reel to reel. They would tape it and see
Speaker 3: how that soundman would see how it was sounding, because
Speaker 3: it was like, maybe it's a soundman a fault. So
Speaker 3: there was a point in the tour where we have
Speaker 3: one of these tapes and after the show, we're sitting
Speaker 3: in the hotel room listening to this tape and I
Speaker 3: said to the other guys and Bob, they're wrong, they're wrong.
Speaker 3: This is good, this is really good, and the world
Speaker 3: is wrong and we're right. And it wasn't because I
Speaker 3: was sure of that. It was because if you didn't
Speaker 3: say that, it would be like this is We're in
Speaker 3: a terrible situation. And it just gave you the feistiess,
Speaker 3: or the strength to say we're doing something here and
Speaker 3: if you don't get it, it's your fault. You had
Speaker 3: to take that attitude. And we played all over the
Speaker 3: world and ended up with people booing as loud as ever.
Speaker 3: And we're playing at Albert Hall in London and the
Speaker 3: Beatles are there, and the Stones are there, and the
Speaker 3: Who were there, and everybody's there and the audience is
Speaker 3: booing us and they're all watching this and that is
Speaker 3: that's really awkward. When there's people musicians that you want
Speaker 3: to impress and everybody's booing you, You think, how do
Speaker 3: you possibly think we're any good when everybody's booing us.
Speaker 4: Those guys like it, though, the Stone the Beatles.
Speaker 3: The Beatles said, don't pay any attention to that. They're wrong.
Speaker 3: This was really good, so I was kind of like, see.
Speaker 5: But Levon didn't like it though.
Speaker 3: He didn't like that. Nobody likes being booed and people
Speaker 3: throwing stuff at you. You know, I'm I'm quite convinced
Speaker 3: of that. But Levon didn't like the music. He didn't
Speaker 3: like Bob Dylan's music. He didn't like any of this
Speaker 3: and didn't want to be playing with him at all.
Speaker 3: Levon left. Then when we all moved to Woodstock and
Speaker 3: we had Big Pink, we called Levon and said, okay,
Speaker 3: you got to it's time to come back. And he
Speaker 3: came back, and Bob was like a different guy. He
Speaker 3: looked completely different, and he was writing songs and he
Speaker 3: was you know, it was just great. And Levon came
Speaker 3: back and loved it all, loved being you know, back
Speaker 3: with his brothers, and loved Bob and came around on
Speaker 3: the music, he understood something, he had time to understand it.
Speaker 3: Plus the songs that I was starting to write, he
Speaker 3: was like, Oh, that's who we are, you know. So
Speaker 3: the pieces were coming together and he came back into
Speaker 3: the fold bigger and stronger than ever.
Speaker 5: When did you know you had or was there a
Speaker 5: particular song that, when you finished you said, okay, this
Speaker 5: is our sound. I think I'm getting it. Was there
Speaker 5: one moment or one song that kind of gave you
Speaker 5: the idea for what the band could be.
Speaker 3: No, I didn't know. We were just experimenting and in
Speaker 3: a discovery process. I didn't know it until we were
Speaker 3: recording it. And I was playing something for Rick the
Speaker 3: other day that we recorded something and it was breaking
Speaker 3: all kinds of rules and the way you record and
Speaker 3: what you do and what you're not supposed to do
Speaker 3: and everything. And we were trying this and it was
Speaker 3: discouraging what they were telling us going into it, but
Speaker 3: we were doing what we knew how to do, and
Speaker 3: we recorded it, and then we went in and heard
Speaker 3: it and I said, that's it. That's who we are,
Speaker 3: that's what we sound like. And it was unlike anybody
Speaker 3: else or anything. And still at the time you think,
Speaker 3: and that's either a good thing or a bad thing.
Speaker 3: That song was what Well, there was two songs that
Speaker 3: I played for him. One song was called Tears of Rage,
Speaker 3: which was the first song that we recorded on the album,
Speaker 3: and it's the first song on the album. And then
Speaker 3: we recorded a song called The Weight. And then when
Speaker 3: we recorded these songs, it was like, Okay.
Speaker 5: Can you tell me a little bit about writing the
Speaker 5: Weight because it's just such an unusual song, like how
Speaker 5: it came to you?
Speaker 3: Or well, I was saying, this was a song, This
Speaker 3: was a spare song. This was a song that I
Speaker 3: had that if something else didn't work out, we could
Speaker 3: use it. So we had to put it together mostly
Speaker 3: right there in the studio. I had played it for
Speaker 3: the guys before and everybody thought, yeah, cool, you know,
Speaker 3: but nobody was like, whoa, that's it, that's a you know,
Speaker 3: none of us knew. And then when I was writing
Speaker 3: this song, I was drawing on these influences from when
Speaker 3: I was sixteen years old and went from Canada down
Speaker 3: to the Mississippi Delta. Some of those characters, some of
Speaker 3: those images, you know, I had now pulled them out
Speaker 3: of my trunk of imagination, and I was incorporating them
Speaker 3: into a musicality and in the stories. And I was
Speaker 3: also very much which you know, I've said this before
Speaker 3: that I was very much into Lewis Boonewell's films. And
Speaker 3: there was there was something, there was something in his
Speaker 3: the a thematic thread in some of his movies that
Speaker 3: I couldn't get over. And it was really about people
Speaker 3: trying to be good, really trying to do the right thing,
Speaker 3: and then something comes along and something turns it upside
Speaker 3: down on its head, right. And so this was a
Speaker 3: story about a guy who comes into this town. It's
Speaker 3: called Nazareth, and it's because that's where the guitar company
Speaker 3: is from. So I look in my guitar and it
Speaker 3: says Nazareth, Pennsylvania. Right. So I look in there and
Speaker 3: I say, I pulled into Nazareth, right. And I start
Speaker 3: writing this story and it's about a guy who goes
Speaker 3: somewhere and everybody that he runs into it's like he's
Speaker 3: just trying to be of goodwill. He's just trying to
Speaker 3: do the right thing, and it turns into it's like
Speaker 3: the old saying, it depends on who you run into.
Speaker 3: And storytelling you're going along, you think you've got an idea,
Speaker 3: but it depends on who you run into, right, And
Speaker 3: so I'm thinking of all of these characters, and some
Speaker 3: of them are based on characters that I imagined or I
Speaker 3: met when I went down to the mississip Be Delta,
Speaker 3: and I'm thinking, what would be really cool for Levon.
Speaker 3: I knew his instrument really well, of his voice and everything,
Speaker 3: and I thought I thought I was doing a Lewis
Speaker 3: Boone Weell thing. I wasn't, but I thought I was right,
Speaker 3: and I thought I was, and I when I wrote
Speaker 3: the song, I thought, well, there's a song. I never
Speaker 3: heard that song before. Maybe that's good, you know, but
Speaker 3: it was unfamiliar, and so with that you think, geez,
Speaker 3: I don't know is that good or bad? Is that
Speaker 3: different or just obscure, you know, like record producers have
Speaker 3: to consider when they're making music. And so when I
Speaker 3: taught the song to the guys, and everybody was kind
Speaker 3: of enjoying. They knew where I was coming from and
Speaker 3: some of these things. The other guys didn't care about
Speaker 3: Lewis boonwell or anything, but I did. And so anyway,
Speaker 3: they took the ride on it and as we were
Speaker 3: getting into it, we were kind of smiling to one another,
Speaker 3: like that verse that Carmen and the Devil verse, you know,
Speaker 3: that's pretty cool. And then all this thing and ah,
Speaker 3: and then it has like a conclusion that ties it
Speaker 3: together or something like a movie would all of these things.
Speaker 3: I've just been a movie bug, you know, so long.
Speaker 3: So anyway, I was making a little movie. And then
Speaker 3: we record the song and I have no idea except
Speaker 3: we got through the whole song, didn't make a mistake,
Speaker 3: felt pretty good. We went in and listened to it
Speaker 3: and I thought, holy moly, that's a thing. That's a
Speaker 3: thing right there. That's a sound that's I haven't heard
Speaker 3: that before, you know, And all of those things then
Speaker 3: add up for you inside.
Speaker 4: You know, can you put your finger on what was
Speaker 4: so unique about that sound? Or is it just a
Speaker 4: kind of gestal thing.
Speaker 3: That No, that's part of the great holy mystery that
Speaker 3: you really don't know. And if you think you do,
Speaker 3: then you're not ready for a good surprise, you know.
Speaker 3: Going in and I say, Garths, why don't you play
Speaker 3: piano on this? And Richard you play Oregon. And then
Speaker 3: when we get to this part in the song, why
Speaker 3: don't we do this and wait and then you come in,
Speaker 3: and then you come in, and then you come in together,
Speaker 3: and then you know, and then that folds over on
Speaker 3: top of itself. And all of these ideas I had
Speaker 3: no idea whether if they were good ideas. I thought that,
Speaker 3: you know, it's enough to make you want to do something.
Speaker 3: Then we got the song and I say, you know what,
Speaker 3: on this second last verse, Rick, why don't you take
Speaker 3: over the lead vocal on that? It just seemed like
Speaker 3: a good idea at the time, And once again, it
Speaker 3: wasn't until we went in that control room heard it
Speaker 3: over those speakers that Garth playing the piano on that
Speaker 3: really made sense. That Levon's drums with these big tune
Speaker 3: down toms that I had asked him if he'd be
Speaker 3: okay doing, and his vocal. I wasn't even sure this
Speaker 3: is the key I wrote it in. I don't know
Speaker 3: if it's a good key for you to sing it in.
Speaker 3: And he's like, yeah, no, I think it's okay. So
Speaker 3: all of these things are way up in the air
Speaker 3: and no idea really, and then when you hear it
Speaker 3: all come together and those pieces of the puzzle actually
Speaker 3: fit that's when you say, yeah, I knew all along.
Speaker 1: We'll be back with more from Robbie Robertson after the break,
Speaker 1: We're back with more of a conversation with Robbie Robertson.
Speaker 1: The band eventually broke up with one final concert in
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy six. It was filmed by Martin Scorsese and
Speaker 1: released as The Last Waltz. It's become legendary and kicked
Speaker 1: off a decades long working relationship between Robbie and Scorsese,
Speaker 1: starting with Raging Bull. Robbie's done the music for most
Speaker 1: of Scorsese's films, including his most recent The Irishman. Not
Speaker 1: too long ago, Rick discovered a piece of music that
Speaker 1: he loved, and when he found out it was from
Speaker 1: a Scorsese movie, he had to ask Robbie about his involvement.
Speaker 2: So I heard this on the radio on some obscure
Speaker 2: streaming thing, had no idea what it was, and started
Speaker 2: researching trying to find out because I hadn't heard anything
Speaker 2: like this before. It was fascinating to me, And it
Speaker 2: was fascinating because I was familiar with the music, but
Speaker 2: not familiar enough to know what it was. But I
Speaker 2: feel like I'd heard the music before, and then I'm
Speaker 2: listening to the vocals and I'm thinking this, the singer
Speaker 2: is unbelievable. But it sounds like the singer's not listening
Speaker 2: to the music she's singing to even though it fits
Speaker 2: like it clearly works, but there's a strange, alien connection
Speaker 2: to it. And it just sounds like magic to me.
Speaker 2: That sounds like a brand new kind of music. So
Speaker 2: when I saw Robbie the other day, I asked him
Speaker 2: about it because I didn't know who made it, but
Speaker 2: I knew that it was in a soundtrack that he
Speaker 2: was involved in, and I asked him how it came
Speaker 2: to pack us and tell us how it came to pass.
Speaker 3: I was working on the music from Martin Scorsese's movie
Speaker 3: Shutter Island, and and I was I was on a
Speaker 3: roll of a certain kind of music that him and
Speaker 3: I hadn't really experimented with much before, with Christoph Pendereeski,
Speaker 3: who is somebody that I've admired for years. And I
Speaker 3: told I've said to Marty over some days, sometime we've
Speaker 3: got to find a way to use some Pendereski and
Speaker 3: some John Cage and some you know, modern classical music
Speaker 3: in a movie. So when he decided he was going
Speaker 3: to direct this film, and he sent me the script
Speaker 3: and uh, and he said, yea, is it give you
Speaker 3: any ideas? And I said, this is it. This is
Speaker 3: the time, this is when we can. I think we can.
Speaker 3: He said, whoa really modern classical music and that he said,
Speaker 3: interesting because it's a it's a movie about insanity and
Speaker 3: and modern classical music is fearless and expressing some of
Speaker 3: that part of of of the mind. So anyway, we
Speaker 3: did a lot of things that in the movie and
Speaker 3: it was great fun and so we you know, all
Speaker 3: this stuff. And then at the end it was like
Speaker 3: he said, I said, I don't have anything figured out
Speaker 3: yet for the end of the movie and the end credits.
Speaker 3: So I had heard this piece of music by this composer,
Speaker 3: Max Richter. I think it's called Daylight something or but anyway,
Speaker 3: i'd heard this piece of music and there was almost
Speaker 3: the dodgy oh wish you know, there was something that
Speaker 3: really pulled on your heartstrings in it, and it fit
Speaker 3: in to the other world that we were experimenting. And
Speaker 3: there was a song that I knew about for years
Speaker 3: just that stayed with me. By Dinah Washington, who has
Speaker 3: always been a favorite of mine, her sound, her interpretation,
Speaker 3: I've you know, she's just one of my faves over
Speaker 3: the years. So I'm thinking about this song, this Bitter
Speaker 3: Earth that she sang, I'm thinking about this Max Richter
Speaker 3: classical piece and I and there was a connection there
Speaker 3: for me. So then I have them. I check it.
Speaker 3: They're both in the same key hmm. So I then
Speaker 3: took the Dinah Washington piece and I cut out each
Speaker 3: of her lines in the song like you would a
Speaker 3: sample and hip hop and it so I had her
Speaker 3: whole performance. Now I've got the Max Richter piece. So
Speaker 3: I take her line by line and lay her in
Speaker 3: the way I would have sung it on top of
Speaker 3: the Max Richter thing. I just put her there and
Speaker 3: I do this thing. And it's I don't even know
Speaker 3: if you're allowed to do that. It's like, can you
Speaker 3: can you do that with Dinah Washington and this great composer,
Speaker 3: Max Richter. I don't know, but I can't help but
Speaker 3: do this. So I lay this stuff in. I send
Speaker 3: it to Scarcese and say, I've tried something here, but
Speaker 3: I've got to warn you. I don't know that this
Speaker 3: is okay, but there's something about it and see what
Speaker 3: So he said, what do you mean not okay? And
Speaker 3: I said, I've taken a liberty on this thing, and
Speaker 3: I'm taking somebody's music and I'm putting it with somebody
Speaker 3: else's music. And this is not like a little sample
Speaker 3: in a hip hop too and where we're playing a
Speaker 3: little riff of James Brown here for a moment and
Speaker 3: then we're onto something else. This is the whole piece
Speaker 3: of these two artists. So anyway I it. He says,
Speaker 3: oh my god, this is beautiful fault and it's perfect
Speaker 3: at the end of this movie, and what did this thing?
Speaker 3: And to have this bitter earth come on after this thing?
Speaker 3: And so anyway, so then I say, well, I'm not
Speaker 3: going to call them and ask him if it's okay.
Speaker 3: Somebody has to call Max Richter and Dinah Washington's family
Speaker 3: or kids or whoever and see if it's okay that
Speaker 3: I've done this right. And they called and they give
Speaker 3: the coming back and they said they heard it and
Speaker 3: they love it. I thought, wow, that's a really good sign,
Speaker 3: you know, because a lot of people are like, you
Speaker 3: cannot mess with this, you know, you you know, you
Speaker 3: can't cross that line. That's that's a sin, right, and
Speaker 3: that they said they liked it. So anyway, it ended
Speaker 3: up at the end of this movie. And I was
Speaker 3: telling Rick the other day some months ago, I'm watching
Speaker 3: a French movie that I was curious about. I'm watching
Speaker 3: this movie and throughout the movie they used this piece
Speaker 3: of music, and so I'd say to Martin Scerceesi I said, wow,
Speaker 3: I was watching this movie and they were using this
Speaker 3: throughout the movie, not just once. They're using it, you know,
Speaker 3: a few times. And he says, they can't do that.
Speaker 3: I said, they did. It might be too late for
Speaker 3: us to object.
Speaker 5: And then they look at the soundtrack and they said,
Speaker 5: who's Morris Levy. Yeah, it makes your voice sounds Guy's
Speaker 5: like I know that voice.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 5: I never would have guessed.
Speaker 2: I never would have made the connection.
Speaker 5: It sounds a Morts exactly.
Speaker 2: It's like it's so modern. It felt just completely about Goard,
Speaker 2: but beautiful and unlike anything I heard before.
Speaker 1: Thanks to Robbie Robertson for coming on the show and
Speaker 1: of course for creating Changri La. You can hear some
Speaker 1: of Robbie's music, including Song's Office twenty nineteen release Cinematic
Speaker 1: by listening to our playlist for this episode at broken
Speaker 1: record podcast dot com, and while you there, sign up
Speaker 1: for our behinder scene in this newsletter. Broken Record is
Speaker 1: produced help from Leah Rose, Jason Gambrell, Mia Lobel and
Speaker 1: is a production of Pushkin Industries. Our The music's by
Speaker 1: Kenny Beats. I'm justin Richmond. Thanks for listening.