WTF with Marc Maron Podcast - Episode 781 - Robbie Robertson

Episode Date: January 29, 2017

Robbie Robertson is in the garage to give Marc the full lowdown on the history of The Band, from its origins as a backing group to its final bow with The Last Waltz. Robbie talks about being with Bob Dylan when he went electric and dealing with the blowback of that, and he explains how he came to have such a great working relationship with Martin Scorsese on many of the director's films. Sign up here for WTF+ to get the full show archives and weekly bonus material! https://plus.acast.com/s/wtf-with-marc-maron-podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

LOCK THE GATES! Alright, let's do this. How are you, what the fuckers? What the fuck buddies? What the fucking ears? What the fuck nicks? Fuck it, man. I've got Robbie Robertson on the show today. He was the guitar player for The Band. He's got a book coming out. It's out. It's called Testimony, and there's also a big box set of The Last Waltz, which I had some nice emotional respite watching it,

watching that time, those guys, all those people that were in that movie but talking to robbie was uh if you love music you know from back when music had intent and some political purpose and also you know just it was that time man you know the time the crashing waves of the of the 60s into the 70s the last last gasp until the resurrection of Americana. But it was a great talk. But look, I got to talk about something. I can't. He gets to a point where you really got to ask yourself, what is it?

What's your responsibility? personally to the country and as an american and as somebody who who who believes in this country i mean this you know this refugee ban i mean i haven't been sleeping and i wake up with nightmares and i wake up with you know totalitarian nightmares i'm sure a lot of you understand what i'm saying and And the issue is, this is not the refugee ban. It's no longer a right-wing, left-wing issue. It's not about Republicans or Democrats. It's not about conservatives and liberals. I mean, it's really about being an American. Seriously. I mean, I don't have to remind everyone that you know we have the privilege to live in this country and because of that we have a moral duty to protect oppressed people and to allow

asylum to those who seek it that's that's what this country's about i mean if anyone who calls himself the president of the united states of america wants to prevent us from executing that moral duty that that person is being a shitty american and i don't even have to mention names because it's about america and it's our responsibility as citizens to override that that moral transgression that disregard for American principles and foundations I mean seriously you should not be able to be afforded the freedom

to this country if you can't protect and uphold them for others and that's this is an American thing it's an it's being a good American and look if And that's this is an American thing. It's an it's being a good American. And look, if your anger or ideology or mangled religious beliefs have disabled you from being capable of compassion, mercy, empathy, charity, decency, I guess I'm not speaking to you. So you can sit there and fume. If you are an autocratic loyalist or a totalitarian

apologist and you know that and you're okay with it, I guess I'm not speaking to you. So sit there and fume. Turn me off. If your comfort and or partisan hopes have insulated you or enable you to rationalize what is happening, I'm speaking to you. Step up. Be a good American.

be a good American. If you are debilitated by your fear, I know it, I know it, I feel it, and you're turning inward or trying to distract yourself, I'm speaking to you. So step up. Be a good American. If you feel detached or despondent or hopeless or you never were a political person, it's not too late to engage in some civic responsibility. Step up. Be a good American. And if you are angry and engaged in fighting the good fight in an active way,

thank you for being a good American. Godspeed. And if you were one of thousands who protested this weekend, thank you. And if you are with the ACLU or support the ACLU and help to force a stay that will prevent people who arrived with valid green cards from being deported. Thank you. No one is helpless.

If you're angry, you can do things. Are you angry? Good. Stay angry, but be focused. Focus. Focus. Focus. This isn't a partisan agenda it's an american agenda

step up be a good american and also look if you're a celebrity and you're planning to attend the oscars next month particularly if you're nominated you need to think long and hard about that because one of your fellow nominees has just been barred from attending by way of presidential decree. This tone is what it is. I want to be able to live with myself. And there is zero point in anyone doing anything having a podcast going to award shows entertaining ourselves if we're not going to fight like hell to protect the foundational structures of this country that allow us to do these things in the first place

i mean are you telling me we americans can't create jobs rebuild infrastructure have reasonable immigration and trade policy and health care. Without being full of hate or compromising the foundations of our democracy or disregarding the Constitution. I mean, come on. Fuck. I woke up today, called my state representatives, told them how I felt. Ask them to speak up. or forego my support. I made some donations to organizations working to support war displaced refugees around the world.

Sir, fucking women and children, shattered lives, nowhere to go. shattered lives, nowhere to go. The International Rescue Committee, IRC, UNICEF, Mercy Corps, Doctors Without Borders, help out, step up. Be a good American. You should also donate to the ACLU. We're going to need them. This is a fight.

But it's good to know even in a seemingly futile and hopeless situation that direct action can have direct results. No one is helpless. If you're angry, you can do things just step up

this isn't a partisan agenda i am not being partisan it's an american agenda agenda all right okay hey hi i guess i should point out that i am recording this on saturday shit could have gone down yesterday for better for, I don't know. All right. You know, when I got the opportunity to speak to Robbie Robertson, I was excited. I was not nervous, but there was a lot there. And I don't know when you grew up, and I sort of missed the 60s. And the time that followed, I was born in 1963. so those band records came out in, what, 69, 72, 70. So I was not formed, but it was around me.

It's strange what we are nostalgic for and what we reach back to in these times of horror and discontent. in these times of uh horror and discontent you know the america that you know that i get nostalgic for you know it's sort of music centric and it's sort of what i took in when i was a young person you know there was uh it everything seemed uh exciting and radical and and uh you know like important in the late 60s and early 70s and and I do have a sort of template for that in my head, though I missed it emotionally because I was a child. But the music obviously is something we all relate to. And I hadn't seen The Last Waltz, which I think actually came out in the mid to late 70s. So I was like 13 or 14. But I remember seeing it the first time in the movie theater, Martin Scorsese's Last Waltz, which was the last concert of the band and all those people coming out to play with them.

Some of them I didn't even know at the time, but I knew there was something sort of coming to a close and something very connected to the music and something very raw and very earnest about it. And certainly the band were an earnest bunch. And a very unique outfit. That I didn't grow to appreciate until much later. But to see Neil Young and Joni Mitchell and Van Morrison. And Muddy Waters and Eric Clapton. Staple singer, Emmylou Harris. I mean, I'm sure I'm leaving out some. But I wasn't there.

I don't need to. It's not like I'm forgetting someone who I was at the performance of. But I watched it the other night in the new Blu-ray and I got choked up. I get choked up a lot, but now just for, it certainly wasn't a simpler time, but it was a more focused time.

It was easier to see some road to the the truth to the facts and there was something more intimate about the social landscape and certainly about the community of these musicians and of the country i think maybe i'm romanticizing but nonetheless uh i was excited to sit down with robbie i didn't know what to expect and it was great there was a with Robbie. I didn't know what to expect, and it was great. There was a lot of things I didn't know that I should have known. I did not realize that the band was the band for Bob Dylan when he went electric and was booed offstage or attempted to be booed offstage. I didn't know that I should have known it, but I'm glad I found out for the first time from Robbiebie robertson all right so mr robertson's in good form lucid and likes to talk so uh and as i said before his recent memoir testimony is available wherever you get books and this is me and my conversation with robbie robertson from the band.

Well, I like this. Thanks, man. It's got a great feeling here. And is this a garage? I think it was a garage. It was probably built in the early 20s. So it was probably for that car. And then I put a floor in.

And then eventually moved all my shit in here for my entire life. This is the repository of all my life shit. It's just nice to take it all in. Yeah. And, you know, it either all starts out in a garage or ends up in a garage. Yeah, mine ended up in a garage. That could go either way, too, the ending, in a garage. That could either be a good thing. But you didn't start in a garage.

Well, there was garages, you know, and this house that the band found up by Woodstock. The Pink House. The Pink House. Big Pink, we called it. Yeah. And in the basement. Yeah. Which I've, I don't even know that I've ever said this before.

But when you went down into the basement, it wasn't just the basement. It was a garage, too. Oh, really? Yeah, because it was a big door that could open and you could drive a car in. Okay. But we never did because we wanted to use that space. Right. oh really yeah because it was a big door that could open and you could drive a car in okay but we never did because we wanted to use that space right making music instead it's funny that that i think that environment that and i was thinking about this and we'll go back in time in a minute but like it seems to me that whatever happened in that house you know with dylan and

with you guys seem to to set the standard for how to make that kind of music, for how to make connected, sort of earthy, you know, music that evolves, you know, as a group. I mean, it seems like now there's a whole resurgence of people aspiring to be what you guys were. You know, at the time when we did the basement tapes and this idea of making music in your home and that was special because I'd had no real expectations to it. So it had such a relaxed atmosphere and it even was like nobody was supposed to hear this right and wasn't dylan it's sort of uh like he was sort of uh kind of considering his mortality after an accident and

just kind of hanging out at the time it you know he had had this accident and and he'd hurt himself pretty bad right he had to wear like a neck brace for quite a while. But after that, and when we found this house, it became like the clubhouse. Right. You know, where guys would go every day and hang out. Like who? Like a street gang kind of thing. Yeah, you guys.

But were there other people, hangers on, people around? No, not some, but not too much. And it was a place to go every day, like a workshop or something. It turned into this. And this had been a dream of mine. If we could only have the clubhouse where we would go every day and we could lock ourselves away from the world and create something that we are meant to do,

that we are on a mission to do. And when I took Bob out there to see it, at first, because he'd only made music really in recording studios and things. And when I took him out and showed him this, all of a sudden, I could see a light went off over his head. And he was like, can you really make music in here? And can you put it down on tape? And all of this was a revelation. And at that time, nobody was doing this. It was really unusual.

And it was something that I had in the back of my mind that I thought Les Paul did. Oh, really? Les Paul. When he was screwing around with the electronics. Right. He had a house. Right. And he had like an echo chamber in the side of a cliff or something.

I thought, that's the way you do it and when i heard his records the records that he made with mary ford yeah they didn't sound like anything else right that how do you make a record that doesn't sound like anything else and it's in your own environment whoa let's, so anyway, I'd been talking to the other guys in the band and to Bob about this for a long time. And when we found that place, it was like, this is it.

This is Valhalla. This is where we can go, hang out, and create and do something that has nothing to do with the rest of the world. And also at that time, you know, I got to figure you're now recording in your garage. I can sit here and do a multi-track recording. I don't know how, but, you know, people can take the equipment that's provided for us now, which is very easy.

There's nothing, you know, cumbersome or analog about it and make these, you know, whatever they want in a fairly small amount of time. But you guys, you must add like, you know, dozens of instruments everywhere. You're in that space, but you still got to deal with analog equipment. So I imagine that the ability to really change much, you know, once you locked into a groove and made your decisions, you know, was not a labor that you necessarily did that often. We didn't think about it, you know, the technology of it. We had a little reel-to-reel tape recorder.

Yeah. And a little tiny mixer. Like an 8-track? No, no. Like 4? No, stereo. Yeah. It was a, you know, it was a 2-track tape recorder.

Yeah. And the mixer, though. So you couldn't overdub anything. No, no, no, no, no. No, we could record, though, on one of the tracks. Yeah. And then record something on the other track. Right, right, right.

That was possible to do. Right. But it wasn't that necessary. Yeah. You know, whatever we were going to do, we were going to just do it. It wasn't a matter of, oh, let's get some ideas later. But we did the idea of experimenting with sound and trying stuff and everything. It all took, you know, it all had a birth there in the basement.

Right. But like when you guys, because the Basement Taste is a beautiful record and, you know, it had a weird life. You know, I did a little reading on it you know it did you know you didn't necessarily plan to release it right right but i have to assume that when you say experiment that you weren't you're not you're not talking about you know weird sounds you know you're talking about you know creating the space for to take these chances within the the type of music you did. You weren't looking to do prog music or anything. Right.

Yeah. Derek Trucks was in here, and he talked about when he was a kid, he had done some recording with Rick and Levon up in Woodstock, and that he's sort of an inspired kind of prodigy, Derek Trucks is. Yeah. And he said that

those two guys you know they were impressed with his playing but I said I think they told him the advice they gave him was you got to let it breathe man uh-huh you know and and I think that a lot of you know the band sound and the time you guys took and the space that you were able to allow it happen within all the different instruments was really the great gift you guys gave to music in a way. It was obviously very tight music, but there was definitely a groove and there was space and you just felt like everyone was represented. In your early use of playing music, it's how much can you do? Right. You know what I mean?

of playing music. Yeah. It's how much can you do. Right. You know what I mean? You're reaching and you're pushing and you're wanting to make a big noise, a big special noise. Yeah.

And after a while, you start to realize that takes up a lot of energy and it's not adding up to as much as when it does breathe. Yeah. And that it's those spaces sometimes between the notes that mean as much as the notes. Right. And so then you start hearing things about, hey, man, it's what you leave out, you know,

and stuff like that. So they were probably telling Derek, you know, you're playing too much. Yeah. Right. you know you're playing too much yeah right so when when you say that like you know by the time you got to uh to outside of woodstock there i mean i just recently watched you know they sent a book over and they sent the the big box of the last waltz i hadn't watched that in years and i get choked up watching it i don't do you ever watch it again i I don't watch it. I've seen pieces of it. And I don't watch it unless I'm working on it.

Yeah. You know, because I, you know. Sure, sure. You know, what am I going to do? Yeah, no, of course not. Right. But I mean, but there's something about my, because I'm 53, so I missed most of it. I was too young.

But when I watch it, it just feels that there was a community and a unity and a respect that everybody had for each other that is very heartwarming to me. And it just felt like that whole crew of people, not just the band, but all the people that played on there. Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, Ben Morrison, Dr. John, Muddy Waters, Staples Singers, Emily Harris, everybody. I always feel like you all knew each other and that you ran into each other on the road and there was all this mutual respect and understanding of each other's music. Is that real?

Am I projecting that? There was a big crossroads of music between all the artists that were involved in The Last Waltz. And it felt like there was people representing different parts of music that we held in high respect. and it felt like there was people representing different parts of music that we held in high respect. Right.

We said, okay, who's going to represent the music of New Orleans? We've got to get Dr. John here. Right, yeah, yeah, yeah. The blues, Chicago blues, don't you got to have Muddy Waters for that? Absolutely. And Paul Butterfield. And Paul Butterfield yeah of course

who was an old friend of ours it's a very funny story what levon and i robbed yeah uh um paul butterfield of his uh marijuana stash one time in in chicago when we first met him yeah and he was horrified and wanted to kill us uh-huh and and had to figure out, we ran into him a year later, and we had to figure out for him not to kill us. He was a bit of a dangerous man. Was he? Yeah. Yeah.

And this all happened around Mike Bloomfield and everything. I know we're talking about some inside stuff and everything. But Bloomfield, like you had recorded with Bloomfield. Yes. By that point, right? Yep. Yeah. I knew Mike and Levon and I went to Chicago to visit with Mike and he was going to take

us around to all the joints. Yeah. So, and we went and we heard Muddy play and we heard Otis Rush play. Was it early 60s? This was probably 64. So you guys are not the band yet. No, we're the Hawks. The Hawks.

Ronnie and the Hawks. Yeah. So this is your first time in Chicago. It's our first time hanging out in Chicago in the blues world. Right, right. Right? So anyway. And is Butterfield playing with?

He had his own group. Already. Yeah. And Bloomfield was playing with him. First couple albums. Yeah. Yeah. And he was so good.

Yeah. But he was kind of a strange, mean-spirited guy back then. Yeah. And we went over to his place for him to play us some old blues records right and he took out two bags of grass bloomfield talked to him bringing out so he he gave us a bag of grass and he rolled up a joint from another bag of grass and i said well what's the difference and he said well that stuff I gave you is shit and this is the good stuff and I said oh really that's a that's how you do it huh yeah and he

said yeah and and and he was like I don't give a fuck whether you smoke it or yeah and I was like whoa I could feel a chill in the air yeah yeah so Levon and I went back to visit him the next day, and he wasn't there. And we went in and stole his good grass. We got the landlady to let us in. So anyway, we got out of that without him killing us. And so then we thought we could invite him to the last waltz. It was still unresolved at that point? No, it was resolved by then.

But anyway, all these people, and then the British blues to have Eric Clapton representing that, and country music, and Lou Harris and gospel, the staple singers, and Tin Pan Alley, Neil Diamond. And Van Morrison to represent Van Morrison. To represent this soul singer, this Irish soul singer, and one of the best singers ever, right? And he was somebody that we knew. He was a wonderful and strange guy. Yeah, yeah. And when we were first starting to put the whole thing together, we had thought, well, we would invite Ronnie Hawkins

who we started out with and Bob Dylan right two real important people in our story in our background sure and then somebody said well if you're going to invite them you got to invite Eric Clapton right we were like that's right we got him in there. Eric was the one waving the flag for the band very early on. He wanted to quit playing because of you guys almost. Yeah, that's what he said, that he quit Cream because of after he heard music from Big Pink. What do you think it was about Big Pink that made him like, have you talked to him about it or have you thought about that?

What do you think? Because when you listen to Clapton what he did after Cream was he after that sort of amalgamation of of of American music styles that you guys represent what do you think it was in that record that made Eric Clapton go like now fuck it's over yeah I go into detail on this in in in my book but I think it was kind of like what we were talking about before. When we made music from Big Pink, we'd already been together for like six or seven years. Yeah. So we knew what to leave out.

Right. And the subtleties were as important. And in the group that he was playing with, it was kind of bashing you over the head music, like right between the eyes all the time. And when musicians heard music from Big Pink, they thought, oh my God, listen, this has a depth to it. This has space. It has air in it right it's really about this soul coming to the surface so it struck people in a different kind of way in all different forms the soul you know because you're you know it's informed by country by soul by folk by you know the blues i mean it all seems to creep in somehow again because unintentionally i imagine, from all those years that we'd been out there playing and playing the Chitlin Circuit down south and playing everywhere, we were picking up all these musicalities by the side of the road.

Primarily with Ronnie? With Ronnie and then after we left Ronnie and before we joined up with Bob Dylan. But all of these musicalities were starting to come into our fold. Right. And when we were making Big Pink, it was like taking all of these pieces of music, putting them in a big bowl of gumbo and mixing it up. Right.

Because when that record came out, which really shocked me at the time, people said, where the hell did this come from? Right. What is this? Right. And I'm like, what do you mean, what is this? This is what happens when you woodshed and you gather.

Yeah. And you want to do something that is not trendy. Right. But was it like in your mind, like during the time of recording Big Pink, were you guys sitting there saying that or was it happening organically? Organically. So like a lot of that you retrofit on. Nobody ever talked like that. No, I wouldn't think so.

No. You just found the groove or whatever you were doing. Yeah. And you worked it out. As you evolved into your own band, that because you were so accustomed to playing behind other people, that you had an intuition with each other. Because your communication with the members of the band, you had to be very attuned because you didn't know what the front guy was going to do necessarily or what was going to happen. Is that true? True. One of the things that was such a feeling of achievement from the Last Walls concert was we played with everybody from Joni Mitchell to Muddy Waters. We played 21 songs that we hardly had an opportunity to run over with anybody.

Right. We had no cheat sheets. Right. Nobody read music. Cars read music, but none of the rest of us could even read music if we had cheat sheets.

Yeah. So to remember all of those songs by all of these different people and nobody screwed up. It's insane. It was an achievement. We thought,

Guinness Book of Records right here tonight. And also that moment where you know i watched the uh i watched a tom petty documentary recently and when they went on the road with dylan they you know they were such a sort of like a very kind of anal outfit in terms of you know playing and they said something about dylan that like you know there were times when you're backing dylan where you don't know what he's gonna go into you know he likes to mix it up a little bit now there seemed to be a moment in the last waltz when he moved from the first song to the second song where I think he said d7 or something that he did he impulsively decide the next song at that moment we felt that

we had a musical relationship that we were fearless on what he might want to go next. We had been down the path with Bob before. So we were game. Sure. And we had an idea of what we were going to play, but we knew it was still up in the air. Right. And what the arrangement was and everything. You just had to follow him.

Yeah. Yeah. But with him. You knew the song. We felt a comfort thing with him and with Ronnie Hawkins. Right. The bookends in the thing. We felt like we can handle this with everybody else.

And especially with somebody like Joni Mitchell. Which, you know, she has different tunings. It's not like you can look at her hands and figure out what chord she's playing. You really had to be on your toes. And she was exquisite. So much fun to play with. Do you keep in touch with anybody? Yeah. Oh, you do? Yeah. Oh, that's good. I like hearing that. Like Bob and Joni and people like that? Yeah, I went and visited with Joni not too long ago. Joni had a very unfortunate health issue. And so I wanted to go and give her some love, pay some respect. Yeah, and I had dinner with Neil just a while back.

And everybody, they're all just fantastic people besides being really talented. Yeah. So do you still play a lot? I play all the time. I'm in the middle of a new record. What's the feel? What's the tone? I'm in a discovery process.

I'm doing something that I haven't done before. So I'm on a mission to understand it. Oh, yeah? Yeah. So it's revealing itself as you engage. I like that, too. Sure. I like not knowing the ending.

So let's go back to the roots of it, then, because you're Canadian, which is interesting. It's a good thing.'re thinking about that every day well pretty much yeah I I envy that you know but uh but how does it start for you I mean what what was your you know where were you born exactly I was born in Toronto, but I grew up between Toronto and the Six Nation Indian Reserve. That's where my mom was born and raised. Now, an Indian Reserve in the Canadian sense, I know that it is not a very good situation in this country. What was the situation there? It wasn't too hot there either.

Yeah. But when I was really young, I didn't understand that. there either yeah but when I was really young I didn't understand that and we would go my mother and I we would go and visit a lot with the relatives and Six Nations and what tribe she was from the Mohawk nation huh and I thought they had it made yeah because I was an only child. Right. And when we stayed at the house on Six Nations, it's on second line there. Yeah.

In this house, my uncle and aunt had 12 kids. Yeah. And they were all in this house. Yeah. And we were guests staying over. And I thought, this is fantastic. Sure. Wow.

You know, everybody's around and it's all happening. Yeah. And then it seemed to me that everybody played music or sang or danced. Yeah. And I thought, this is incredible. Because I could hear music, somebody sitting right in front of me playing music. What was the music? Sometimes it was traditional music. Really?

And they'd be playing like Iroquois water drums. Or somebody would have a violin with a string missing. Right. Or a homemade mandolin. Right. Or a guitar. But it was a pastime. It was their entertainment. There wasn't any big road shows

coming through town at Six Nations. So they had to provide their own entertainment. And everybody did something. And I thought, I want to be a part of this. And so as a young kid, they started showing me a couple of little chords on the guitar. And over a period of time, I got really drawn to this. And at one point when I was probably 12 years old, I thought, I'm getting as good as they are. Yeah. This is going somewhere. I'm ready. Yeah.

So in all of that, all of this starting on the Indian Reserve of a way of life, too. Yeah. Their connection, what my cousins could do that nobody in the city could do physically, what they could smell in the air, what they could tell. They could tell it was going to rain at 3 o'clock, you know. They were connected. They were connected. Yeah. going to rain at three o'clock you know they were connected they were connected yeah and

magnificently uh connect like i've remarked before that they didn't climb up a tree they ran up a tree right and i thought whoa this is what i want to be a part of i want what they got and when i went back to the city it was to me it was like nobody here can do what they're doing. No, it's a whole different sense of time, right? It is that. It was like in a bit of a time warp, as a matter of fact. Because I read a book called On the Res by Ian Frazier that kind of changed. Sure.

That like there was just little elements of this idea that like, you know, if they need to get up early, they drink water before they went to bed. So they'd have to piss and they get up early if they need to get up early. But like the entire days were, were, were dedicated to, you know, at least two or three people, even if it's just going to get apart for a car, the sense of pace and timing and community was so, you know, connected to, to, to the task at hand and to the planet in a way. Yeah. So where's your dad play into all this? My dad, well, it's a big part of the storytelling in my book. Yeah.

But my blood father got killed before I was born in a car. What did you know about him? I didn't know anything about him because I grew up with who I thought was my father. Yeah. Robertson. Yeah. And I didn't know until I was 12 or 13 years old that in fact he wasn't my real father. Yeah. And that... How'd you find out? Your mom told you? My mother and him split up. Yeah.

Then he became quite abusive and my mother got to a place where she just didn't want to take it anymore. Yeah. And so she said... Was he a drinker? Yep. Yeah.

Yeah. There was a lot of drinkers. Yeah. You know? Yeah. And, you know,. There was a lot of drinkers. Yeah. You know? Yeah. And, you know, it was like a period of time, too. It seemed like a lot of hardworking people were hard drinking people, too. I think that's still something that happens.

Yeah. It can happen. Sure. Sure. So, anyway, when I was 13 years old, my mother says that she's leaving him, that we're leaving him. Right. There was no like... Do you want to stay?

Yeah. There was no discussion. And you're the only child? Yeah. Uh-huh. And so one day she says, I know I should have probably told you this before, but he's not your real father. And I was, I didn't even know,

I couldn't imagine because he thought he was my real father. Oh, he didn't really, he didn't know? He didn't know and I didn't know. So she grabbed him right in the... Yeah, yeah. Because he'd been asking her to marry him. And when my blood father got killed, she was so blown away by everything that she agreed to then marry him.

So then she says, he's not your real father. Yeah. I'm like, what? Who is? How does this happen? What do you mean? Yeah. All of that.

And she says, I'll tell you later. Yeah. I'm like, oh, my God. And she had this Indian thing where you don't want to reveal too much too quick. Right. You know? Yeah. So she said to me after that, I have called relatives,

the brothers of your real father to introduce you to them. When was that? This was when I was 13 years old. Oh, so okay. Yeah. And what'd you find out about them? I found out that these two brothers

came to meet with me. One was younger than my real father and one was older and my mother knew the older one and they met with me and they were like in two seconds they were like this is our brother's kid yeah and uh and and and and they were really, really warm and pulled me right in. And my uncle, the younger one, my uncle Nady, he was a very traditional Jewish man. He was in the fur business and diamond business, and he wanted me to be in the fur business and diamond business.

Oh, they were ready to take you in huh oh they took me right in yeah took me right in and him and he was married to this beautiful woman and they had a little boy and a little girl and he went on over the next period of time and really embraced me really pulled me in because my father was his hero in life. So it was a connection for him. Did you live with them? I didn't live with them, but I saw them all the time. Oh, they're a big part of your life.

And then he went on over the next few years to pull off the biggest swindle in Canadian history. Which was what? It was Ponzi before there was Ponzi. Uh-huh. Before Mr. Ponzi came along. Yeah. He pulled off this incredible swindle. Yeah.

And then my connection to the underworld became huge. Yeah? Yeah. How old were you? It was from starting when I was 13, and it went on up until I was 20. Your connection to the Canadian underworld? Canadian and New York. Oh yeah? Yeah. So what was the swindle exactly? The swindle, it was a Ponzi scheme. So he got a bunch of people's money. Yeah, he got a bunch of people's money. Said he was going to do something with it and he didn't he would he his intentions were to do

something with it and he had something figured out right but it wasn't happening as fast is what it needed to happen uh-huh and people got very restless yeah and so he had to resort to bringing in these heads of the mob to protect him and to hold everybody off in the meantime until, because his idea was, I'm going to take this money, I'm going to make a bunch of money, and everybody's going to do good with this. And then the family, me and the Klegerman family family we're going to start a legitimate insurance business or finance company right and be like the bronfman's in montreal that started seagram's yeah and started out as bootleggers yeah so that was the big plan yeah did he end up in jail yeah yeah

so where's the uh where's the music at this at this point so i'm telling him and i'm telling my relatives i feel a strong connection to music and they're like yeah i was like yeah like rock and roll music they're like rock and roll music what is that it was like you know what is this crazy idea that you're talking about this the late 50s and they were like oh wait a minute you mean show business yeah ah sure oh i see i understand okay yeah but it isn't like that crazy rock and roll people is it you know yeah you know It was a funny thing. Well, yeah, they understood show business, but the new music was the crazy kids.

Yeah, crazy kids. It hadn't become show business yet. Yeah. Right. Was it the late 50s you're talking here? This is early 60s. Okay. Up to the mid-60s.

So then he goes, he and the head of the Toronto Mafia end up going to prison at the same time together, which they think is actually a good idea because everything can settle down. They can get the money figured out, all this kind of, and they get, when they get out of prison, I'm now playing with Bob Dylan, right? So they come and see us playing at a big arena and everything and thousands of people and all this. And now they're like, wait a minute, wait a minute. How do we get in on this? How do we become a part of this? Maybe the kid needs help.

This looks like good show business here. And did they? No. It was too late. That ship had sailed that's right but uh how do you get let's put uh you know ronnie hawkins into perspective because i don't think a lot of people myself included before i saw the last waltz really knew who he was how did uh so you're getting proficient at guitar way you know over your teen years right how do you get your first gig what's the first band I I'm in a bunch of bands yeah in there around the Toronto area in one of the groups that I'm in

we open for Ronnie Hawkins at the in the Hawks at like a Sunday dance yeah because they they play clubs jury where's he from, Ronnie Hawkins? Arkansas. Okay. They were all from Arkansas. So it's a big tour. He's on the road. He's on the road, and they play clubs,

and they play some one-nighters like this dance. Did he have any hits? Oh, yeah. No, he was a big rockabilly guy. So was it regional or national hits? National. Yeah. No, no, he was doing really really well i feel

bad i don't know more yeah no but it was at that time yeah this is like 1959 yeah uh 19 the original rockabilly guys yeah what are the hits um i think his biggest hit was mary. Oh, yeah. And another one called 40 Days. Yeah. And another one called Southern Love. And so anyway, but he was an incredible performer and had a crackerjack group. Yeah. The Hawks were amazing. And it was mind-blowing to me. And so when we played on this same gig with them. What was your outfit called? The suede. Yeah, okay. Matching outfits?

In some of the groups. In the group Robbie and the Robots, we had matching outfits. So this was a door opening. Yeah. Seeing Ronnie Hawkins and the the hawks and they're all from the south yeah they're all the authentic real thing yeah and this is in canada yeah right so i want to hang around and have some of this rub off on me yeah and and learn what i could learn and so i managed to be able to be friends with them and hang around.

And one day, Ronnie Hawkins, I heard him say, I got to go in the studio and make a new album, and I got to find some songs. So I went off and I wrote two songs. I came, played them for him, and he said, well, I'll be damned. I'm going to record both of those songs. And I was 15. I thought, okay, we're getting somewhere. That's amazing. When I was a year, and he said, I got my eye on you, kid. Something going on here. And he said, I got my eye on you, kid.

Something going on here. Yeah. When I was 16, he asked me to come from Toronto down to Arkansas. And he wanted to try me out and see if I had what he called the right potential to become a hawk. On guitar? On guitar. Yeah. But first first the bass player was leaving right the bass player was going off to become a preacher down south sure and he said to me left more money in it i guess that's what he said so down here preacher can do pretty damn good you know and i was like wow this is the real thing yeah yeah yeah so i tried out and i was too young i was 16 years old he just left canada and your mom was like see you later no my mom was like this is this is wrong right you're not doing this right and forget about it

and the uncles the jewish family everybody like, you're out of your mind. But you did it. You dropped out of high school? I did. And I said, I convinced them, and I sold it pretty well. I said, if I don't do this, if I don't try this, I could be sorry for the rest of my life. Oh, and that's something anyone can identify with.

And I said, if I go down there and it doesn't work out, I'm coming right back and I'll go right back to school. Okay, made a deal. They said, okay, you can try it. Yeah. And they didn't believe, they thought I would be coming right back and going back to school.

Because I was 16, you needed to be 21. Sure, they thought, let him get it out of his system. You needed to be 21 to play any of the places. Yeah. I was unexperienced. And the big thing was, in a rockabilly band, they don't have any Canadians. Yeah. It just doesn't exist.

Canadians barely exist. They were all from the South, right? Yeah. barely exist they were all from the south yeah right yeah but these guys were leaving and ronnie hawkins and levon who was very very important to ronnie as far as he had a great ear and a great sense of music and musicianship and everything so levon was in the original hawks he was he he was there since the beginning yeah and leave on took me under his wing and helped me and i eventually i ronnie hawkins hired me when i was 16 years old to play bass to play bass and then the guitar player was leaving and then i took over on guitar

so you were it you were playing rockabilly music. That's fast shit. Professional, on the road, the Chitlin Circuit down south, 16 years old. How many gigs you working? We played usually seven nights a week. For years? For years. And the more, the better. Yeah? Yeah.

You just kept getting tighter and tighter? We kept getting better and learning more and taking more in and having life experiences that one day I had to write a book about. Sure. And now we got the book. But was Levon older than you? Was he older than you? Yeah.

He was a few years older than me. And where does Rick come in? When does that happen? When do you guys detach? So after these guys from the South and from arkansas one by one they want to they want to stay home they don't want to be on the road anymore they got families whatever one by one they're leaving and so then levon and i noticed this guy on a and everybody just about happens the same way as i did, that they were in a little opening band that played for us.

We saw Rick Danko playing with his own little group. Where? In Canada. He's Canadian, too. So Ronnie liked playing up in Canada because they paid more money and you worked less hours. And you were special, too. Yeah. I mean, like, you don't have that in Canada.

Right. Yeah. So we see Rick and we think, this guy, there's something about this guy, something about him musically. And he can sing. Wow. Yeah. And so anyway, between Ronnie, Levon, and I, we pull Rick into the fold.

He becomes part of it. Then we play another group, and we see Richard Manuel. In Canada? In Canada. Everybody's in Canada now. We see Richard Manuel, and the piano player's leaving. And Richard's a great piano player, but he can also, he's 17 years old and he sings like Bobby Blue Bland. We're like, wow, where do you get one of those in Canada, right?

So we pull Richard into the fold. Then we hear this musician like we've never heard anybody like this in our life, Garth Hudson. Where was that? In Canada. What was he doing? In London, Ontario. life Garth Hudson yeah where was that in Canada what was London on Terry he was playing he was playing in his uncle's funeral home how'd you find him and because he also played in a little local group too okay and he came and heard us and one day he came and sat in with us. And this guy could have been playing with Miles Davis or the Symphony Orchestra.

Right. He was that accomplished. And at the same time, there was something incredibly imaginative and funky about his playing as well. Yeah. So we were like, oh, my God, if we only had somebody like that, it could make us all so much better. Yeah. So we were like, oh, my God, if we only had somebody like that, it could make us all so much better. Yeah. And he was like an unusual cool guy. And it was hard to get him because we asked him to join us and he said no.

Yeah. And we're like, what? What? You know? Was he like, he already got a keyboard player? No, because we were talking about having a piano and an organ player right like a gospel group right no bands had that right right and it could give us a big sound yeah an organ in the group sure ronnie was into this but we couldn't can leave on and i said let us talk to garth so we went and told uh um we told garth about our

lifestyle yeah and that this was probably something he'd want to get in on and everything and he still said no yeah and we were like what is going on with this guy right and finally we found out that his parents had dedicated so much to his musical education right if he joined a rock and roll band they'd be furious they'd be like he had throwing it down the drain yeah right so Ronnie Hawkins took a shot at the parents and said that Garth would not only be, this would be great for his career and his musicality, but he would also be the musical teacher in the group. And he said, and that's a very prestigious position. And they fell for it.

They did. And we got Garth. And then that was it. for it they did and we got garth and then that was it once we had this combination of people that was what we were looking for and even for and for that band that was like a big uh a very experimental approach yes it was there was an intellectual element to it that you were already aware that you were bringing in elements that were going to make Ronnie Hawkins, his sound bigger and different, and he was willing to do it. Oh, he loved the idea of having the hottest group around.

Sure. The problem was that we were all younger. We were younger and we were growing, and we were growing quickly now. And we were growing quickly now. Yeah. And we outgrew Ronnie Hawkins. And we musically went to another place. And we realized that we had to move on. How did that go down? It didn't go down very well in the beginning,

as these things usually don't. But eventually, it got all patched up and we loved Ronnie and he was the guy that helped put us together and and we owed a tremendous debt and a lot of love to him so we ended up being you know friends forever but it's interesting a guy like Ronnie Hawkins I mean outside of like you know what you guys were doing, it seems that, you know, given that he was sort of not necessarily stuck, but committed to the music that he does, he could put another outfit together. Yes. And that's what he did. Right.

And you guys went on as what? Levon and the Hawks. Oh, he didn't mind you saying the Hawks though. But we were the Hawks. Right. He didn't mind you saying the Hawks, though. But we were the Hawks. Right. And we were using that because whatever little support system we had built up over the time,

because we were still playing the Chitlin Circuit down south and these clubs up north and in New York. Wherever we played, we had a following as the Hawks. So we were just using that in the meantime. And you were drawing. And we were getting people coming to the meantime. And you were drawing. And we were getting people coming to the clubs, and we were good. Yeah, and this was the early 60s still? This is 64, 65. So when you go to New York and stuff,

were you aware of the scene that was going on there, like the folk scene or whatever was happening? I mean, did you feel the other music around that was being processed through new york primarily i mean you're down in the real world with the real people in the chitlin circuit in the south and you're taking all that in but new york was a place where people came to sort of uh exploit that to a degree and and create i guess at that time, the folk scene, right? That was part of it. It was still like the end of, in the 60s,

it was still the end of the Tin Pan Alley, the Brill Building, people, you know, songwriters and people making pop. Sure, Lieber and Stoller, Carole King, Goffin, and those guys, yeah. Great stuff. Yeah. And then in its own kind of

underworld in New York and in Toronto too there was this folk music uprising happening we were from the other side of the tracks we were playing R&B and rock and roll and

on the other the joints that we were playing in were really rough clubs bars right and the folk scene they were playing in coffee houses there was nobody sipping cappuccinos where we played right yeah and and so we thought wow this is for college kids over there or something on the other side of the tracks right you know we don't go over there but sometimes they come over here yeah right and so it was just another thing and it was there was a bit of an irony than to actually hooking up with somebody like bob dylan right who was like the king of the folk music world. Well, you were part of his whole transition, really.

Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So you're playing with the Hawks, and how does, who was it, Albert Grossman that wrote you in? It was Albert Grossman, and we had a bit of a reputation out there. Which is what? Which is being a hot band that we really could play. Could.

Yeah. And so people knew that. Yeah. And the word was out. Yeah. So amongst Albert Grossman and the people at his agency and Bob Dylan and everything, the word was on the street, right, about these guys. Word was on the street, right, about these guys.

And in the beginning, I met with, I got a message to come and meet with Bob Dylan. And I'd met him in passing with John Hammond Jr. Yeah. John Hammond Jr. took me to the recording studio to see a friend of his who was recording that day. We go in the studio and this guy bob dylan and i don't know very much about he's just recorded a song called like a rolling stone what was that 64 or something 65 i think and his dad john hammond senior was the producer correct or was the guy who discovered yeah the a and r guy the head of where was he at columbia yeah yeah assigned him to columbia i always wondered about john hammond jr because I'm a big fan of his,

and I like his way of playing the blues, and I always have. Was it that time, was there a sense that he's like, well, he's the boss's kid kind of thing? No, no, there was, I don't think John Hammond Jr. and Sr. got along that well because his parents had split up.

Right. And he was on his mom's side. Right. Right? Yeah. And him going off to become a white blues singer, I don't think that the father thought, that's something in this family we shouldn't do.

Well, it's interesting because he recorded all those singers. And he found these. He's even part of the Springsteen story. And I think Billie Holiday. Right. Like a very famous guy. See, he thought it was fine for Billie Holiday to sing blues. Right.

He didn't think it was okay for his son. I'm guessing at this. Right. Sure. I get you. I get you. So you're up there with Jon Hammond. You see Dylan in the studio.

You met him. So I meet him in passing. Then, I don't know, a while later, he called, I get a message to come and meet with Bob. Yeah. And I have no idea what this is about. Right. I was curious, and I went and met with him,

and he wanted to hire me to play guitar with with him on some dates that he was gonna do yeah and so I said I can't yeah I'm in a group right you know we don't yeah we don't go package deal and he said well how do we make this work and I said well maybe because it was just really two dates he was talking about I said if if Levon can come too, he's like my partner. If Levon can come too, maybe I could pull this off. Right. So they figured it out. Levon and I played these two dates with him.

And they were like a nightmare, a musical nightmare. Why? We played at Forest Hill Stadium in New York and the Hollywoodllywood bowl in la and we didn't know what this routine was yeah that people hated him going electric right right we'd only ever been electric we we thought there was something funny about the idea of going electric right but we got we understood the thing but people threw stuff at us booed us and charged the stage i mean physically bokeys charged the stage

charged the stage to do what with anger and venom coming out of their mouths it was like oh my god they really hate this so we play these two dates, and Bob says, that went pretty well. How would you like to do a whole tour? So we were like, wow, this guy, this guy, he's bold. I got to say he's bold. Were you a fan? I didn't know that much about his music yet. I'd heard a couple of things.

Right. I heard a song somewhere at one point, a song that he did called Oxford Town. Oxford Town. Oxford Town. Yeah. And I loved the sound of his voice on it and that he was saying something. Yeah. The song was about something.

Right. Whoa. And so that caught my attention but it was like i wasn't following folk music right i was following you know what we were into southern music yeah yeah yeah so so after you know we we did these dates and he said let's do this tour that's when we said no no no no, no, we're a group. Right. And we're with this group.

Right. So that ain't going to happen unless the whole group does it. Right. And we've got to even see whether they want you. Right. Because this is weird. And at that time, he's not like a known quantity in the world you're in necessarily. He's a star, but you still didn't necessarily know

exactly how you fit into it yeah right he was playing carnegie hall right by himself yeah yeah you know and it was like i don't know we're playing a club we're we're on the other side of the track yeah right so these worlds so finally he comes and hears this play and says let's do this together and we think this is so weird let's check it out let's see what happens but when you were when you were at the studio and he was laying down like a rolling stone or whatever was bloomfield there and then and al cooper and everybody was there yep so you saw them like that music made sense to you i thought thought, this is interesting. There's something going on here.

Right, right, right. You know, I thought it's a little disorganized. Yeah. But it's fresh. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I've never heard anything quite like this before. Right. And boy, does he have a bunch of words.

Yeah. Right? But that band, because, like, that band on that album on that song you know that that's definitely you know where you guys were going or part of it right well that was where the combination of musicians that he was putting together that's where they were going right and so that opened a door right this yeah and so for us being able to play music electrically and so he was doing we would do some of the songs that he had done acoustically before yeah some of the songs that were his new songs now that he did with musicians in the studio yeah so

it was really a discovery process. So you said yes to the gig. We said, let's check this out. Right. You know, I was fascinated by him as a writer, as what was happening in the world musically, and as a person. I really liked him, too.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And we had a great time together. Yeah. So I was saying, let's check this out, guys. Yeah, yeah. And we had a great time together. Yeah. So I was saying, let's check this out, guys. Yeah, yeah. And so we hooked it up and we went and played and people booed and threw stuff at us every night where we went. You know what it reminded me of? How many dates?

Oh, well, we toured all over the United States and Canada. Getting booed. All over Australia and all over the United States and Canada. Getting booed. All over Australia and all over Europe. And the famous Royal Albert Hall was you guys? Yeah. Uh-huh. Yeah. And every night, everywhere, this happened.

And I thought, what a strange way to make a buck. What were the other guys saying? They were saying, this is really crazy and at some point could you feel the hate in the room when you would oh yeah and you guys were playing you had to enjoy you had to do the job but you knew they were just sitting there with sour faces these guys oh my god no no you in some cases it was so violent the backlash was so violent and you had to think as anybody would this is not going over very well with the audience maybe we should make some adjustments right right and the adjustment was from the Bob Dylan camp, you should get rid of these guys.

They're ruining everything. They love you, but they hate these guys. So we were like, whoa, look at the position this has put us in. This is awkward. This is really, really strange. So you didn't know whether you wanted to be there for sure, and all this was going on. But the bottom line was, we were getting better and better at this. Yeah.

And finally, there was a moment. I remember after we played a concert, and we were back in the hotel and we had a tape recorder and the sound man was playing us the concert yeah what we had just right and when i was listening to that i said to the other guys and i said to bob they're wrong this is good yeah yeah they're wrong the world is wrong and we got to win this battle right and and and after and we went out and played against this hatred and all of this thing knowing this is a musical revolution right and this is the kind of shit that changes the rules in the whole world yeah and it's us against the world right and we got to prove our point and we ended up we we weren't winning the battle but we won the war yeah but bob was on board bob didn't blink yeah it was incredible

and he the the structure of the show was half acoustic and then you guys would come out knowing sitting back there you know he's closing with masters of war whatever the fuck it is it's all right mar whatever the big closer is and you're like here we go here we go here we go and you know what it even reminded me at one point i had this weird dream yeah that it was like do you remember years ago with wrestlers like gorgeous George and all of these wrestlers and there would be the good guy you were the heel and the bad guy yeah who would come up like with a black mask on he'd come out and everybody would boo him yeah yeah he knew what he was going out there for i felt like a wrestler you know going into battle and when did it like because when did the the music it seems like what happened was the music

business and the sounds eventually shifted in your direction right i mean like you say you you lost the battle but you won the war did it level off to where people were happy to see you well after and it was funny after we did this whole tour and we finished like you said with the famous albert hall show and and all the musicians all the bands in england they were all there in the audience in the different boxes and everything it was embarrassing playing in front of everybody. And the audience just booing you after every song. And it was just getting worse and worse. So after the tour, we come back to the United States. And again, Bob says, well, we're thinking about putting together another tour.

What do you think? We're like, wow, this guy, I'm telling you, you know, this guy, he's either really right or really wrong. So we were talking about that, but that's when he had his motorcycle accident. And so we couldn't go and tour anymore. Really? So that, so, you know, he was going going to be he was going to keep fighting it yeah and then he got hurt and then you guys that's where big pink happens that's right so he's got to lay back for health reasons yeah and then you guys really start to gel together with bob but also with what the sound was evolving into. Well, the idea was that playing with Bob was a temporary passing thing, right?

Yeah, it was like Ronnie. Yeah. Yeah. We were now, now we were going to go and do our thing. Right. We went off into the twilight zone with him for a while. Yeah. And it was an incredible life-changing experience talk about

build thick skin yeah you know but now it was time for us to do our thing yeah what we were our calling right and that's what you know big pink was was all about and was albert grossman your manager albert grossman it was interesting because after the tour, Albert Grossman said, I think that I could maybe get you guys a record deal of doing Bob Dylan instrumentals. Yeah. That was his pitch?

Right. Yeah, yeah. So it was like, wow, he doesn't even know who we are or what we really do. Yeah. But why would he and how could he? Yeah. So when we made music from Big Pink, he was as shocked as anybody was.

So was Bob Dylan. Did he like it? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It was all like, look at this. And that was after the Basement Tapes, Big Pink? Yeah.

Yeah. And then you were your own guys, and then you decided on the name? Yeah. The band? Yeah. Yeah. We'd been together for too many years to start thinking of a silly name. Yeah.

You know? Yeah. You know, Richard Manuel talks about that in the last waltz oh yeah yeah right yeah the crackers yeah so what are we gonna call the strawberry overcoats or whatever it was too silly yeah yeah you know it was that time and at the time to playing with bob everybody referred to us as the band sure for it was going on two years we were so used to that we couldn't that, we couldn't get off that track. And it was the closest thing we could think of to not following a trendy, silly thing

at all. Yeah. Just, this is straightforward. This is about the music. Yeah. And you guys, at that point, after Big Pink, were getting along? Oh, yeah. Yeah. No, we always got along oh you did good oh yeah yeah i mean there was some crazy periods in there you know just because a lot of experimenting with drugs was going on yeah how did you guys avoid that

because i know like you know when you talk about uh you know bloomfield or butterfield and you know and i guess you couldn't like heroin was everywhere right yeah and people got fucked up yeah and some people survived and some people didn't exactly and that was just part of it it infiltrated just about every group we knew yeah and it infiltrated us and at one point i had three junkies in my band yeah and it was like hard to call rehearsal time but like i always wonder about that like what what is the concern level because i guess it was it doesn't seem like it was ever you can never just sit there and go like this is just a party drug i mean that's a big commitment and you know and it's it's devastating i mean in in the unit were you you know concerned yeah scared and concerned

and i was no angel myself right i wasn't standing there with a ruler sure you know measuring things of course um and everybody was experimenting in all kinds of ways right so you can't get on your high horse too much right and i guess they never really realized i you know i mean you could look at the jazz age, but I guess that generation still assumed it was a party. And when it got dark, it was probably a surprise. It was almost part of the ritual at a point. You know, like, you've got to walk through this door

to know if it's real or not. Yeah. But you guys kind of, you journeyed on, and then you made the next record, the band, the record, the second record, you did out here? Yeah, we did it in Sammy Davis Jr.'s pool house. We rented his house. Was he living there?

No, no, no, no. We insisted he move out while we were making the record. Did you meet him? Did you have a relationship with him? No, no, no. It was just a house that he had out while we were making the record. Did you meet him? Did you have a relationship with him? No, no, no. It was just a house that he had owned. Oh, okay. And so we just got it through a rental agency.

Right, yeah, yeah, yeah. And it was a house that we could all live in. And once again, making our own atmosphere and turning the pool house, which you could tell this pool house had such a vibe of Rat Pack vibe to it. Right, right. You know, the way the mirrors were and everything in the place. It wasn't Big Pink. No. And so we had some work to do on that to make it.

But it was like making an atmosphere that had our own character to it. And the record had its own character to it. Yeah, yeah. And the sound and everything so you weren't affected by la necessarily you still brought you know the unit was so tight and once you got the decorations and the shit together you guys were your own landscape you were your own oh yeah country in a way oh yeah just locked in yeah we made it our our own island yeah and uh and it was a great time and a great experience but we were inside our own underground right exactly and we made this

music and it had no connection to the outside world isn't that interesting and were you guys going out at night were you seeing the doors were you seeing Were you seeing Hendrix or Joplin or any of those people? I went and saw Hendrix during this period. Yeah, we went out sometimes, but we were working. Right. It wasn't, you know, it was, and we mostly recorded at night. We would start in the afternoon. Yeah.

Kind of get a plan on what we were going to do have a bite to eat with the family and everything yeah it was very family oriented the the whole vibe and then after dinner we would go down and we would start making music and it's astounding because like you the the outside the the the trend of music of the time was not infiltrating. You guys were doing your own trajectory completely. Yeah. You weren't trying to keep up with anybody. We didn't even know that we weren't connecting with anybody.

We didn't understand that. Yeah. We were just trying to do something really good. Right. And it was in the songs that I was writing, I wasn't trying, I didn't have a big idea. I was just, it was all I could think of at the time. Yeah.

And I was trying to do something really good. Wow. And you did. You did amazing things. You did that album, that second record, that had a couple of big ones on there. Yeah. It was part of

another part of a musical revolution yeah that had such big pink in the band album yeah and other stuff that we did too ended up having a big effect on the course of music yeah on the direction of music yeah on songwriting yeah on stuff you could do that nobody realized you could do before. And I have to say, the fact of being part of the revolution with Bob Dylan opened a lot of doors and showed a lot of things that you could do that nobody was allowed to do before, too. That didn't happen before. Right.

And so that just rubbed off on us, and we thought, that's what you do before too. It didn't happen before. Right. Yeah. And so that just rubbed off on us and we thought, that's what you do. Right. You break the rules. Right. And you change things. It was time later on when we realized we were rebelling against the rebellion that other people thought, who were the rebels out there, that we were rebelling against them yeah you know yeah we're just making we think what you're doing is trendy right we think what you're doing is obvious

right and we're just gonna do this we're just gonna do something whatever it is yeah and whatever our calling is we're gonna follow that path when you look back on those like on those first two records like which songs are you the most proud of i mean it's a hard question i guess yeah different songs for different reasons yeah i really like the song that i wrote it called rag mama rag yeah yeah yeah i'd never heard that before i never heard anything quite like that before. I was drawn to that feel. Yeah. And the combination of the funkiness and the mountain and all of the stuff that was in that gumbo.

Yeah. Yeah. It seems like the dead sort of took off from you guys a little bit. You probably laid it pretty. I bet you your records kind of blew Garcia's mind, I'm imagining. took off from you guys a little bit like you probably had a you probably laid it pretty like i bet you your your your records kind of blew garcia's mind i'm imagining he he told us that he did yeah oh okay that makes sense yeah because rag mama rag is like you they could cover that song yeah and they might have i they covered other songs but i lost track of which ones they did but uh yeah they're you know they've you're like a

secret key to that time in a way the band that like you you know because you can see that influence in them what you know in the dead like on the record certainly and you know and certainly through a lot of other like like even tom petty even that the way that you know each person represents himself in a in a rock band is a, when it's organic and you feel everyone's got this personality and their space, it seems to be something you guys kind of gave the world. That was part of it. Yeah. Yeah. And it was a nice thing to be able to share something that you thought, oh, that inspired somebody.

That's good. And I hear it today all over the place still. What leads to the decision to disband? Well, we had been together on the road for 16 years. Right. And it seemed like we had done it all. Yeah. On the road. Yeah. For 16 years. Right. And it seemed like we had done it all. We had been there and back.

And we had played the roughest, meanest little honky-tonks known to mankind. Yeah. And we had played the biggest concerts in the world. So for that, it wasn't like there's a lot to be learned out here now. And also you did, like you did, you know, big, musically you experimented with everything. You know, like, you know, you did, you brought in horns, you brought in, you know, you did everything. We'd been around the block.

It felt like that. But also at the same time, there was a thing happening out there on the road. And with the interference of drugs, of hard drugs, it was becoming an unknown what was going to show up that night. It got dangerous. And Richard Manuel was really struggling. And the rest of us were struggling, too, because in a group like ours, which isn't about a singer with no shirt on and a guitar player and some other guys, it was really about the

five people in the band. That's why it was a real band. And so when there was one flat tire, you know what I mean? It made everything. So it got to a place where I thought, we've got to go underground. We've got to get out of the public eye, and we've got to help one another and fix this thing yeah before somebody dies because so many of our friends are dying and have died yeah so we've got to do

something and then i thought of what if we bring this to a beautiful musical conclusion, and we have this celebration of what we love in this music and our friends and all that. What if we do something so beautiful like that, and then we do our thing and go underground and rediscover what our calling is? And to everybody, it seemed like what our calling is right and to everybody it seemed like that's the right thing to do yeah that's a beautiful thing to do and so the idea of putting together this celebration yeah which we end up calling the last walls um it it had to do with the times that era yeah it felt like the end of an era yeah it felt like something needed to be brought to a conclusion in everything yeah and and around the outskirts of what we were bringing to a conclusion it felt like there was another there was another uh kind of of revolution stirring of hip-hop yeah and punk yeah there was it was just you know a little just a tiny bit of it seeping under the

door at that time was it 76 yeah the end of 76 yeah so these things were coming in and this thing had built to a crest and there was nothing better than the feeling of getting together and everybody celebrating the music of the band and celebrating one another. And then I had the audacity to go and ask Martin Scorsese to direct the movie of it. Just because you were a fan of his? I was. I loved the way that he used music in his movies. I could tell there was something going on here. Yeah, yeah.

But by audacity, I mean, he was in the middle of directing a movie, and they do not like it when you're directing a movie when you sneak off and direct another movie. Which movie? He was directing New York, New York. Sure, yeah, the musical. Right. Yeah.

And so he was like, oh, my God, I have to do this. I have to do this. Yeah. But how do I do this? Yeah. You know, you can't do that, and they're going to be upset, and blah, blah, blah, all this stuff. But he was like, but I have no choice. I have to do this. Yeah. You know, you can't do that, and they're going to be upset, and blah, blah, blah, all this stuff. But he was like, but I have no choice.

I have to do this. Yeah. And he figured out another complete underground way of leading, and we decided to do this over the Thanksgiving weekend. Yeah. When everybody would be off doing something, and we could maybe sneak this in. Yeah.

And his preparation for the concert is phenomenal. There is a collector's edition. I have it. The shooting script. It's crazy. Isn't it crazy? It's crazy. And you see that the last Walsh movie, you know, after 40 years,

holds up the way it does because the man did his homework yeah i think the man is not messing around like invented how to shoot a concert he wanted it to be a movie yeah you know and it's great it was great to watch it again yeah and he you know and he said i don't i don't particularly like these concert film things with the shaky cameras and ugly lights and everything. We want to make it like a movie inspired by Michael Powell and all of these names that he was bringing out. And it was like, all right, now we're on the right track. Yeah, yeah. And that began, outside of creating that amazing film,

that began your relationship with him, I guess. Yep. And it's an ongoing thing. We have such a fantastic time. You score some and you help him select songs. Yeah. It's great. And every movie that he does is different.

Yeah. It's a new challenge. You've been involved with like a dozen of them, haven't you? Yeah. Yeah. And he's like, he's a live wire. Oh, yeah, he is. Yeah, yeah.

And he's like, he's a live wire. Oh, yeah, he is. And he's still, he's just one of the great masters of movie making in history. And so I just love what he does. And every time he pulls a rabbit out of the hat. And do you find songs that he's never heard and vice versa? Oh, yeah. And that must be part of the fun. Oh, it's great fun.

Yeah. Now, like in looking back, and then you got your solo work i remember your first solo album it was a very big deal i remember because i remember the promo the press on it was that you were going to draw from your indigenous roots a bit so that the music was very different in a way than the band was i remember getting the cd and just pondering it. This is what Robbie's up to. This is the next thing. But it was a popular record.

It did all right, and it got a lot of beautiful, critical acclaim. It was a pretty record. Yeah. And now how many have you done? I don't, how many have I done? Like solo. I don't know, maybe eight or something. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I'm in the middle of a new record right now. Yeah. It's going good. Good. It's going good, yeah. And when you think about, like, I know there were problems with Levon over this or that and with Rick. I mean, how did that stuff end up resolving itself? And then Richard died.

I mean, like, these guys, you know, and Garth is still around, right? Yes, he is. And was there love lost? Not for me there was i never had a problem with levon yeah um in all of the years that we played together yeah we never had a sour word yeah ever it was years after the band and they had been touring as the band and holding on like it seems that once the breakup happened a lot of them could not well i mean one or two of them could not escape you know the the life in a way of what we had yeah yeah yeah um it was years after yeah the last walls when they decided they wanted to go out and and they called me and said, we've decided that we want to go out and make some music,

and we need to make a living. And I was like, and they said, do you mind? We're going to use the name of the band. I said, I would never stand in the way of you making a living and doing whatever you want. And I understand that calling. And I had decided not to join that because I still felt this worry. I still felt this strain inside.

And I was worried about Richard still. And it came, unfortunately, you know, Richard did end up dying. you know you know Richard did end up dying and uh but anyway the thing like years later I heard that Levon said these things yeah that I that I did this or I didn't do that about songwriting credits yeah stuff like that and it was it I never responded to it was so silly that I couldn't even respond to it and i knew that leave on he had this thing inside of him and and i knew it was in there that it was always somebody's fault for something if things weren't going too well and but anyway i loved leave on and i thought he was an amazing talent yeah the closest thing I ever had to a brother

yeah in all of that so when he said these things I just couldn't give it you know yeah yeah in much responsibility and Rick was uh Rick seemed like to be a sort of very special presence Rick was fantastic and I and I was friends with Rick uh you know up to the very end. And I was heartbroken when he died, too. And I was heartbroken when Levon died. And I got to see him before he passed away. I thought he was doing much better. I thought he was on the road to recovery. Were you guys okay at that point?

Did you guys settle it? I was always okay. Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. Was he all right then by the end? I went to see him. I went to see him and held his hand always okay yeah yeah yeah you need was he all right then by the end i don't you know i i went to see him i went to see him and held his hand yeah you know before he passed away and it takes two people to be in a feud yeah i wasn't in a feud right you know i thought he was terrific but he had issues yeah he had health issues and he had some head issues, too, that stirred up on him.

But I just never, I couldn't bring it, I just couldn't make myself, you know, be upset about it. How's Garth doing? And Garth is amazing. He is such an incredible talent. He lives on a different planet than everybody else. But he is such an amazing, like I say in this book, you know, that with Garth, God only made one of those. Yeah.

You know? Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's extraordinary. And I've got a couple of songs, new songs that I've written, that I would love to have Garth, when I record them, play on them with me. Yeah. Because there's something in there, because I always knew great ways to show Garth off.

Oh, good. To the world. Oh, good. And I guess, like, the last question is, like, you know, you've figured out a way to continue doing your own work, to be involved with movies and, you know, really kind of, you know, open up the parameters of your talent and interest. Now, I don't know what your relationship is with Bob Dylan at this point, but what do you feel when you, like, because he's out there all the time, man. I mean, he lives out there.

Yeah. And, you know, and it's so clear in, like, The Last Waltz and everything else that the road means something. It's both light and dark. It's a hell of a place to spend your life in a way. What do you make of Bob Dylan at this point? It's a beautiful thing. He can't need the money. He obviously needs the road.

Where does he stand in your mind and in your heart? Do you have a relationship with him still? Well, I think that there was a long time when Bob didn't go out in public and play. Yeah. Many years. Yeah. And then it came back to him

and then he went and did some more and then he went and did some more, and then he found that it was a big part of what he loved. Yeah. And so he's just going to stay out there until, you know. Yeah, until whatever happens, happens. Yeah. He's going to stay out there as long as he can, and I can only imagine that he just loves it yeah

and it's who he is yeah and i applaud it yeah do you talk to him i can't how do you talk to him he's on the road all the time yeah i i've made i've made some calls i've sent some messages to him yeah yeah you know just saying you know, we got to catch up sometime. But it's like, whoops, there he goes again. Yeah, yeah. You know, now he's over here. Nope, he's back in Australia. It's crazy, right?

Yeah. And so God bless. Yeah. Well, it was great talking to you, sir. Thank you. Really fun. I thought that was great. It was great talking to him.

I like hearing about that time. I like hearing the arc of his life and the arc of music. And I hope you enjoyed it. Go to WTFpod.com for all your WTF needs, tour dates. Get on the mailing list. Posters. Contact info. All right. contact info alright I gotta do the show for Thursday

cause I'm I'm gonna take a little break haven't had one in a little while so on Thursday if I seem detached or my tone is not right for god knows what'll happen this week it's because I'm

I'm away I'll be back all right be a good american boomer lives Thank you.