PUT THE LOAD RIGHT ON ME
“UNFINISHED business?” says Robbie Robertson. “No, I don’t think about… unfinished business.” Robertson is in the process of addressing the weird logistics in his current workload. There is a new solo album, Sinematic – his first since 2011’s How To Become Clairvoyant – as well as a score for The Irishman, the forthcoming gangster film directed by Robertson’s old housemate, Martin Scorsese. But despite such exciting current projects, the past is never too far away. The Band story continues to beguile. First, a new documentary, Once Were Brothers: Robbie Robertson And The Band – based on Robertson’s 2016 memoir, Testimony – opens the Toronto International Film Festival on September 5. A 50th anniversary boxset of The Band’s second album arrives a few months later, in November.
Fortuitously, Robertson is not only at ease managing these multiple career strands simultaneously – he is, it transpires, equally comfortable sharing candid memories from his earlier life. A wide-ranging conversation with Robertson will cover his role in the collapse of The Band – “I stopped herding cats” – and heavy times living on Mulholland Drive with Scorsese – “We crossed the line.” But Robertson will also acknowledge the magic at work in the music he has been making for more than 50 years – and the deep friendships forged along the way. “I love Dylan like a brother,” he acknowledges. Indeed, Robertson reveals that a new collaboration with Dylan may soon be added to the slate. There are other long-standing conspirators, too – Van Morrison, who duets with Robertson on Sinematic’s opening track, “I Hear You Paint Houses”, is “hilarious – he cracks me up”. Meanwhile, Robertson attests that his creative relationship with Scorsese is “right up there” with Dylan and The Band.
Talking of Scorsese, Testimony concluded with The Last Waltz – the director’s film of The Band’s final concert at Winterland Ballroom in November 1976. Robertson reveals that
