Episode 781 - Robbie Robertson
Marc:All right, let's do this.
Marc:How are you?
Marc:What the fuckers?
Marc:What the fuck buddies?
Marc:What the fucking ears?
Marc:What the fuck mix?
Marc:Fuck it, man.
Marc:I've got Robbie Robertson on the show today.
Marc:He was the guitar player for the band.
Marc:He's got a book coming out.
Marc:It's out.
Marc:It's called Testimony, and there's also a big box set of The Last Waltz, which I had some nice...
Marc: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 gasp
Marc:until the resurrection of americana but 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
Marc:who believes in this country.
Marc:I mean, this refugee ban, I mean, I haven't been sleeping and I wake up with nightmares and I wake up with totalitarian nightmares.
Marc:I'm sure a lot of you understand what I'm saying.
Marc:And the issue is it's like this is not the refugee ban.
Marc:It's no longer a right-wing, left-wing issue.
Marc:It's not about Republicans or Democrats.
Marc:It's not about conservatives and liberals.
Marc:I mean, it's really about...
Marc:Being an American.
Marc:Seriously, I mean, I don't have to remind everyone that, you know, we have the privilege to live in this country.
Marc:And because of that, we have a moral duty to protect oppressed people and to allow asylum to those who seek it.
Marc:That's what this country's about.
Marc: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 person is being a shitty American.
Marc:And I don't even have to mention names because it's about America.
Marc:And it's our responsibility as citizens to override that, that moral transgression.
Marc:That disregard for American principles and foundations.
Marc:I mean, seriously, you should not be able to be afforded the freedoms of this country if you can't protect and uphold them for others.
Marc:This is an American thing.
Marc:It's being a good American.
Marc: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.
Marc:So you can sit there and fume.
Marc: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.
Marc:So sit there and fume.
Marc:Turn me off.
Marc:If your comfort and or partisan hopes have insulated you or enable you to rationalize what is happening, I'm speaking to you.
Marc:Step up.
Marc:Be a good American.
Marc:if you are debilitated by your fear, I know it.
Marc:I know it.
Marc:I feel it.
Marc:And you're turning inward or trying to distract yourself.
Marc:I'm speaking to you.
Marc:So step up.
Marc:Be a good American.
Marc: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.
Marc:Step up.
Marc:Be a good American.
Marc:And if you are angry and engaged in fighting the good fight in an active way, thank you for being a good American.
Marc:Godspeed.
Godspeed.
Marc:And if you were one of thousands who protested this weekend, thank you.
Marc:And if you're 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.
Marc:Thank you.
Marc:No one is helpless.
Marc:If you're angry, you can do things.
Marc:Are you angry?
Marc:Good.
Marc:Stay angry, but be focused, focus, focus, focus.
Marc:This isn't a partisan agenda.
Marc:It's an American agenda.
Marc:Step up.
Marc:Be a good American.
Marc: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.
Marc:You know, this tone is what it is.
Marc:You know, I want to be able to live with myself.
Marc: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.
Marc:I mean, are you telling me we Americans can't create jobs, rebuild infrastructure, have reasonable immigration and trade policy and health care?
Marc:without being full of hate or compromising the foundations of our democracy or disregarding the Constitution.
Marc:I mean, come on.
Marc:Fuck.
Marc:I woke up today, called my state representatives, told them how I felt.
Marc:Asked them to speak up.
Marc:Or forego my support.
Marc:I made some donations to organizations working to support war displaced refugees around the world.
Marc:Sir, fucking women and children, shattered lives, nowhere to go.
Marc:The International Rescue Committee, IRC, UNICEF, Mercy Corps, Doctors Without Borders, help out, step up, be a good American.
Marc:Should also donate to the ACLU.
Marc:We're going to need them.
Marc:This is a fight.
Marc:But it's good to know, even in a seemingly futile and hopeless situation, that direct action can have direct results.
Marc:No one is helpless.
Marc:If you're angry, you can do things.
Marc:Just step up.
Marc:This isn't a partisan agenda.
Marc:I am not being partisan.
Marc:It's an American agenda.
Marc:All right.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:Hey, hi.
Marc:I guess I should point out that I am recording this on Saturday.
Marc:Shit could have gone down yesterday.
Marc:For better, for worse, I don't know.
Marc:All right.
Marc:You know, when I got the opportunity to speak to Robbie Robertson, I was excited.
Marc:I was not nervous, but there was there was a lot there.
Marc:And I don't know when you grew up.
Marc:And I sort of missed the 60s and and and the time that followed.
Marc:I was, you know, born in 1963.
Marc:So those band records came out in what, 69, 72, 70.
Marc:So I was not formed.
Marc:But it was around me.
Marc:It's strange what we are nostalgic for and what we reach back to in these times of horror and discontent.
Marc:The America that I get nostalgic for, it's sort of music-centric and it's sort of what I took in when I was a young person.
Marc:Everything seemed exciting and radical and important.
Marc:in the late 60s and early 70s.
Marc:And I do have a sort of template for that in my head, though I missed it emotionally because I was a child.
Marc:But the music, obviously, is something we all relate to.
Marc:And I hadn't seen The Last Waltz, which I think actually came out in the mid to late 70s.
Marc:So I was like 13 or 14.
Marc:But I remember seeing it the first time in the movie theater, Martin Scorsese's Last Waltz, which was the last concert to the band.
Marc:And all those people coming out to play with them.
Marc: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.
Marc:And certainly the band were an earnest bunch and a very unique outfit that I didn't grow to appreciate till much later.
Marc:But to see Neil Young and Joni Mitchell and Van Morrison and Muddy Waters and Eric Clapton, Staples singer, Emmylou Harris.
Marc:I mean, I'm sure I'm leaving out some, but I wasn't there.
Marc:I don't need to.
Marc:It's not like I'm forgetting someone who I was at the performance of.
Marc:But I watched it the other night in the new Blu-ray and I got choked up.
Marc:I get choked up a lot, but now just for... It certainly wasn't a simpler time, but it was a more focused time.
Marc:It was easier to see some road to the truth, to the facts.
Marc:And there was something more intimate about the social landscape and certainly about the community of these musicians and of the country, I think.
Marc:Maybe I'm romanticizing, but nonetheless, I was excited to sit down with Robbie.
Marc:I didn't know what to expect, and it was great.
Marc:There was a lot of things I didn't know that I should have known.
Marc: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.
Marc:I didn't know that I should have known it, but I'm glad I found out for the first time from Robbie Robertson.
Marc:All right.
Marc:So Mr. Robertson's in good form, lucid and likes to talk.
Marc:So and as I said before, his recent memoir testimony is available wherever you get books.
Marc:And this is me and my conversation with Robbie Robertson from the band.
Guest:Well, I like this.
Guest:Thanks, man.
Guest:It's got a great feel in here.
Marc:Is this a garage?
Marc:I think it was a garage.
Marc:It was probably built in the early 20s.
Marc:So it was probably for that car.
Marc:And then I put a floor in.
Marc:And then eventually moved all my shit in here for my entire life.
Marc:This is the repository of all my life shit.
Guest:It's just nice to take it all in.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And, you know, it either all starts out in a garage or ends up in a garage.
Guest:Yeah, mine ended up in a garage.
Marc:That could go either way, too, the ending, in a garage.
Marc:That could either be a good thing, but you didn't start in a garage.
Guest:Well, there was garages, you know, and this house that the band...
Guest:Found up by Woodstock.
Guest:The pink house.
Guest:The pink house.
Guest:Big pink, we called it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And in the basement, which 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.
Guest:It was a garage, too.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Yeah, because it was a big door that could open and you could drive a car in.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:But we never did because we wanted to use that space.
Guest:Right.
Marc:Making music instead.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:It's funny, I think that environment, and I was thinking about this, and we'll go back in time in a minute, but it seems to me that whatever happened in that house with Dylan and with you guys seemed to set the standard for how to make that kind of music, for how to make connected, sort of earthy music that evolves as a group.
Marc:I mean, it seems like now there's a whole resurgence of people aspiring to be what you guys were.
Guest:You know, at the time when we did the basement tapes and this idea of making music in your home.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And that was special because I'd had no real expectations to it.
Guest:So it had such a relaxed atmosphere.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it even was like nobody was supposed to hear this.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And wasn't Dylan, it's sort of like he was sort of kind of considering his mortality after an accident and just kind of hanging out at the time.
Guest:You know, he had had this accident and he'd hurt himself pretty bad.
Guest:Right.
Guest:He had to wear like a neck brace for quite a while.
Guest:But after that, and when we found this house, it became like the clubhouse.
Guest:Right.
Guest:You know, where guys would go every day and hang out.
Guest:Like who?
Guest:Like a street gang kind of thing.
Guest:Yeah, you guys.
Marc:But were there other people, hangers on, people around?
Guest:Some, but not too much.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it was a place to go every day, like a workshop or something.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It turned into this.
Guest:And this had been...
Guest: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.
Guest:And when I took Bob out there to see it,
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:At first, because he'd only made music really in recording studios and things.
Guest:And when I took him out and showed him this, all of a sudden, I could see a light went off over his head.
Guest:And he was like, can you really make music in here?
Guest:And can you put it down on tape?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:All of this was a revelation.
Guest:And at that time, nobody was doing this.
Guest:Right.
Guest:It was really unusual.
Guest:And it was something that I had in the back of my mind that I thought Les Paul did.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Oh, really?
Marc:When he was screwing around with the electronics.
Marc:Right.
Guest:He had a house.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And he had like an echo chamber in the side of a cliff or something.
Guest:I thought, that's the way you do it.
Guest:And when I heard his records, the records that he made with Mary Ford...
Guest:They didn't sound like anything else.
Guest:How do you make a record that doesn't sound like anything else and it's in your own environment?
Guest:So anyway, I'd been talking to the other guys in the band and to Bob about this for a long time.
Guest:And when we found that place, it was like, this is it.
Guest:This is Valhalla.
Guest:This is where we can go.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Hang out.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And create and do something that has nothing to do with the rest of the world.
Marc:And also at that time, you know, I got to figure you're now recording in your garage.
Marc:I can sit here and do a multitrack recording.
Marc:I don't know how, but, you know, people can take the equipment that's provided for us now, which is very easy.
Marc:There's nothing cumbersome or analog about it.
Marc:and and make these uh you know whatever they want in 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 uh that the 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
Guest:We didn't think about it, you know, the technology of it.
Guest:We had a little reel-to-reel tape recorder.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And a little tiny mixer.
Guest:Like an 8-track?
Guest:No, no.
Guest:Like four?
Guest:No, stereo.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, it was a two-track tape recorder.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And the mixer, though, so you couldn't overdub anything.
Guest:No, no, no, no, no.
Guest:No, we could record though on one of the tracks and then record something on the other track on it.
Guest:That was possible to do, but it wasn't that necessary.
Guest:Whatever we were going to do, we were going to just do it.
Guest:It wasn't a matter of, oh, let's get some ideas later.
Guest:But we did the idea of experimenting with sound and trying stuff and everything.
Guest:It all took, you know, it all had a birth there in the basement.
Marc:Right, but like when you guys, because The Basement Taste is a beautiful record, and, you know, it had a weird life.
Marc:You know, I did a little reading on it.
Marc:You know, you didn't necessarily plan to release it, right?
Marc:Right, right.
Marc:But I have to assume that when you say experiment, that you weren't, you're not talking about, you know, weird sounds.
Marc:You know, you're talking about, you know, creating the space, right?
Marc:to take these chances within the type of music you did.
Marc:You weren't looking to do prog music or anything.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc: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.
Marc:And that he's sort of an inspired kind of prodigy, Derek Trucks is.
Marc:And he said that those two guys, they were impressed with his playing, but I think they told him, the advice they gave him was, you gotta let it breathe, man.
Marc:And I think that a lot of...
Marc: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.
Marc:That there was a, it was obviously very tight music, but there was definitely a groove and there was space and you just felt like everyone was represented.
Guest:In your early youth of playing music, it's how much can you do.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:You're reaching and you're pushing and you're wanting to make a big noise, a big special noise.
Guest: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.
Guest:And that it's those spaces sometimes between the notes that mean as much as the notes.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And so then you start hearing things about, hey, man, it's what you leave out, you know, and stuff like that.
Guest:So they were probably telling Derek, you know, you're playing too much.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Right.
Marc:So when you say that, like, you know, by the time you got to outside of Woodstock there, I mean, I just recently watched, you know, they sent the book over and they sent the big box of The Last Waltz.
Marc:I hadn't watched that in years.
Marc:And I get choked up watching it.
Marc:Do you ever watch it again?
Guest:I've, I don't watch it.
Guest:I've, I've seen pieces of it and I don't watch it unless I'm working on it, you know, because I did, you know, what am I going to do?
Guest:Yeah, no, of course not.
Guest:Right.
Marc:But I mean, but there's something about my, cause I'm 53, so I missed most of it.
Marc:I was too young.
Marc: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.
Marc: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.
Marc:I always feel like you all knew each other.
Marc:and that you ran into each other on the road, and there was all this mutual respect and understanding of each other's music.
Marc:Is that real?
Marc:Am I projecting that?
Guest: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.
Guest:We said, okay,
Guest:Who's going to represent the music of New Orleans?
Guest:We got to get Dr. John here.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:The blues, Chicago blues.
Guest:Don't you got to have Muddy Waters for that?
Guest:Absolutely.
Guest:And Paul Butterfield.
Guest:And Paul Butterfield, of course, who was an old friend of ours.
Guest:It's a very funny story.
Guest:What?
Guest:Levon and I robbed Paul Butterfield of his marijuana stash one time in Chicago when we first met him.
Guest:yeah and he was horrified and wanted to kill us uh-huh and and we 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 sure and everything I know we're talking about that's all right inside stuff and everything but Bloomfield like you had you had recorded with Bloomfield
Guest:Yes.
Guest:By that point, right?
Guest:Yep.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest: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.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So, and we went and we heard Muddy play and we heard Otis Rush play.
Guest:What's the early 60s?
Guest:This was probably 64.
Marc:So you guys are not the band yet.
Guest:no we're the hawks the hawks from ronnie and the hawks yeah so this is your first time in chicago it's our first time um hanging out in chicago right on on in the blues world right right right so anyway and what and is uh butterfield playing with uh he had his his own group already yeah and and uh and bloomfield was playing with him right and first couple albums
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he was so good.
Guest:But he was kind of a strange, mean-spirited guy back then.
Guest:And we went over to his place for him to play us some old blues records.
Guest:And he took out two bags of grass.
Guest:Bloomfield talked to him bringing out grass.
Guest:So he gave us a bag of grass.
Guest:And he rolled up a joint for another bag of grass.
Guest:And I said, well, what's the difference?
Guest:And he said, well, that stuff I gave you is shit.
Guest:And this is the good stuff.
Guest:And I said, oh, really?
Guest:That's how you do it, huh?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he said, yeah.
Guest:And he was like, I don't give a fuck whether you smoke it or not.
Guest:And I was like, whoa.
Guest:I can feel a chill in the air here.
Guest:So Levon and I went back to visit him the next day.
Guest:And he wasn't there.
Guest:And we went in and stole his good grass.
Guest:We get the landlady to let us in.
Guest:So anyway, we got out of that without him killing us.
Guest:And so then we thought we could invite him to the last waltz.
Guest:It was still unresolved at that point?
Guest:No, it was resolved by then.
Guest:But anyway, all these people and then the British blues to have Eric Clapton representing that and country music, Emmylou Harris and gospel, the Staples Sinners and Tin Pan Alley, Neil Diamond and...
Marc:And Van Morrison to represent Van Morrison.
Guest:To represent this soul singer, this Irish soul singer, and one of the best singers ever.
Guest:And he was somebody that we knew.
Guest:He was a wonderful and strange guy.
Guest:And when we were first starting to put the whole thing together...
Guest:We had thought, well, we would invite Ronnie Hawkins, who we started out with, and Bob Dylan, two real important people in our story, in our background.
Guest:And then somebody said, well, if you're going to invite them, you've got to invite Eric Clapton.
Guest:Right.
Guest:We were like, that's right.
Guest:Eric was the one waving the flag for the band very early on.
Marc:He wanted to quit playing because of you guys almost.
Guest:Yeah, that's what he said, that he quit Cream because of after he heard music from Big Pink.
Marc: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?
Marc:What do you think?
Marc:Because when you listen to Clapton, what he did after Cream, was he after that sort of amalgamation of American music styles that you guys represent?
Marc:What do you think it was in that record that made Eric Clapton go like, oh, fuck, it's over?
Guest:Yeah, I go into detail on this in my book, but I think it was kind of like what we were talking about before.
Guest:When we made music from Big Pink, we'd already been together for like six or seven years.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So we knew what to leave out.
Guest:And the subtleties were as important.
Guest:And in the group that he was playing with, it was kind of bashing you over the head music.
Guest:Like right between the eyes all the time.
Guest:the time yeah and in 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
Guest: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 no 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
Guest:With Ronnie and then after we left Ronnie and before we joined up with Bob Dylan.
Guest:But all of these musicalities were starting to come into our fold.
Guest:And when we were making Big Pink, it was like taking all of these pieces of music, putting him in a big bowl of gumbo and mixing it up.
Guest:Because when that record came out, which really shocked me at the time,
Guest:People said, where the hell did this come from?
Guest:Right.
Guest:What is this?
Guest:Right.
Guest:And I'm like, what do you mean what is this?
Guest:This is what happens when you woodshed and you gather and you want to do something that is not trendy.
Guest:Right.
Marc: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?
Marc:Organically.
Marc:So like a lot of that you retrofit on.
Guest:Nobody ever talked like that.
Marc:No, I wouldn't think so.
Marc:No.
Marc:You just found the groove or whatever you were doing and you worked it out.
Marc:And I think that's interesting that 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.
Marc: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.
Marc:Is that true?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest: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.
Guest:We played 21 songs.
Guest:that we hardly had an opportunity to run over with anybody.
Guest:We had no cheat sheets.
Guest:Nobody read music.
Guest:Garth read music, but none of the rest of us could even read music if we had cheat sheets.
Guest:So to remember all of those songs by all of these different people and nobody screwed up.
Guest:It was an achievement.
Guest:We thought Guinness Book of Records right here tonight.
Marc:And also that moment where, you know, I watched the I watched a Tom Petty documentary recently.
Marc: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 playing.
Marc: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 going to go into.
Guest: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 write he might want to go next we had been down the path with bob before
Guest:So we were game.
Guest:And we had an idea of what we were gonna play, but we knew it was still up in the air.
Guest:And what the arrangement was and everything.
Guest:You just had to follow him.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But with him.
Guest:You knew the songs.
Guest:We felt a comfort thing with him and with Ronnie Hawkins.
Guest:Right.
Guest:The book ends in the thing.
Guest:We felt like we can handle this with everybody else.
Guest:And especially with somebody like Joni Mitchell.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Which, you know, she has different tunings.
Guest:It's not like you can look at her hands and figure out what chord she's playing.
Guest:You really had to be on your toes.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And she was exquisite.
Guest:So much fun to play with.
Marc:Do you keep in touch with anybody?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Oh, you do?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Oh, that's good.
Marc:I like hearing that.
Marc:Like Bob and Joni and people like that.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I went and visited with Joni not too long ago.
Guest:Joni had a very unfortunate health issue.
Guest:And so I wanted to go and give her some love.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Pay some respect.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:yeah and i had dinner uh with neil just a while back and everybody they're that's great they're all just fantastic people besides being really talented yeah so like do you still play a lot i play all the time i'm in the middle of a new record and what's the feel what's the tone
Guest:I'm in a discovery process.
Guest:I'm doing something that I haven't done before, so I'm on a mission to understand it.
Guest:Oh, yeah?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:So it's revealing itself as you engage.
Marc:I like that, too.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:I like not knowing the ending.
Marc:So let's go back to the roots of it, then, because you're Canadian, which is interesting.
Marc:It's a good thing.
Marc:You thinking about that every day?
Marc:Well, pretty much.
Marc:Yeah, I envy that.
Marc:But how does it start for you?
Marc:I mean, where were you born exactly?
Guest:I was born in Toronto, but I grew up between Toronto and the Six Nation Indian Reserve.
Guest:That's where my mom was born and raised.
Marc:Now, an Indian Reserve in the Canadian sense, I know that it is not a very good situation in this country.
Marc:What was the situation there?
Guest:It wasn't too hot there either.
Guest:But when I was really young, I didn't understand that.
Guest:And we would go, my mother and I, we would go and visit a lot with the relatives in Six Nations.
Guest:And what tribe?
Guest:She was from the Mohawk Nation.
Guest:And...
Guest:I thought they had it made.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Because I was an only child.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And when we stayed at the house on Six Nations, it's on second line there.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:In this house, my uncle and aunt had 12 kids.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And they were all in this house.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And we were guests staying over.
Guest:And I thought, this is fantastic.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:Wow.
Guest: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 it i could hear music somebody sitting right in front of me playing what was the music
Guest:Sometimes it was traditional music.
Guest:Really?
Guest:And they'd be playing like Iroquois water drums or somebody would have a violin with a string missing.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Or a homemade mandolin.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Or a guitar.
Guest:But it was a pastime.
Guest:It was their entertainment.
Guest:There wasn't any big road shows coming through town at Six Nations.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So they had to provide their own entertainment.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:and everybody did something and i thought i want to be a part of this yeah 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 i'm ready i'm ready yeah
Guest:So in all of that, all of this starting on the Indian reserve of a way of life, too.
Guest: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 it was going to rain at 3 o'clock.
Guest:They were connected.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:They were connected and magnificently connect.
Guest:I've remarked before that they didn't climb up a tree.
Guest:They ran up a tree.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And I thought, whoa, this is what I want to be a part of.
Guest:I want what they got.
Guest:And when I went back to the city, to me, it was like nobody here can do what they're doing.
Guest:No, it's a whole different sense of time, right?
Guest:Right.
Guest:It is that.
Marc:It was like in a bit of a time warp, as a matter of fact.
Marc:Because I read a book called On the Res by Ian Frazier that kind of changed.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:That there was just little elements of this idea that if they needed to get up early, they'd drink water before they went to bed.
Marc:So they'd have to piss and they'd get up early if they needed to get up early.
Marc:But entire days were dedicated to...
Marc:you know, at least two or three people, even if it's just going to get a part for a car, the sense of pace and timing and community was so, you know, connected connected to, to, to the task at hand and to the planet in a way.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:So who, who, where's your dad play into all this?
Well,
Guest:My dad, well, it's a big part of the storytelling in my book.
Guest:But my blood father got killed before I was born in a car.
Guest:What did you know about him?
Guest:I didn't know anything about him because I grew up with who I thought was my father, Robertson.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I didn't know until I was 12 or 13 years old that, in fact, he wasn't my real father.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:How'd you find out?
Guest:Your mom told you?
Guest:My mother and him split up then.
Guest:He became quite abusive.
Guest:And my mother got to a place where she just didn't want to take it anymore.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so she said... Was he a drinker?
Guest:Yep.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:There was a lot of drinkers.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And, you know, it was like a period of time, too.
Guest:It seemed like a lot of hardworking people were hard-drinking people, too.
Marc:I think that's still something that happens.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It can happen.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:So anyway, when I was 13 years old, my mother says that she's leaving him, that we're leaving him.
Guest:Right.
Guest:There was no like... Do you want to stay?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:There was no discussion.
Guest:And you're the only child?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so one day she says, I know I should have probably told you this before, but...
Guest:he's not your real father.
Guest:And I was, I didn't even know, I couldn't imagine because he thought he was my real father.
Guest:Oh, he didn't really, he didn't know?
Guest:He didn't know and I didn't know.
Guest:So she grabbed him right in there?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest: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.
Guest:So then she says, he's not your real father.
Guest:I'm like, what?
Guest:Who is?
Guest:How does this happen?
Guest:What do you mean?
Guest:And all of that.
Guest:And she says, I'll tell you later.
Guest:I'm like, oh, my God.
Guest:And she had this Indian thing where you don't want to reveal too much too quick.
Guest:So she said to me after that,
Guest:I have called the relatives, the brothers of your real father to introduce you to them.
Guest:When was that?
Guest:This was when I was 13 years old.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And what did you find out about him?
Guest:I found out that these two brothers came to meet with me.
Guest:One was younger than my real father and one was older and my mother knew the older one.
Guest:And they met with me and they were like, in two seconds, they were like, this is our brother's kid.
Guest:And they were really, really warm and pulled me right in.
Guest:And my uncle, the younger one, my uncle Nadie...
Guest:He was a very traditional Jewish man.
Guest:He was in the fur business and diamond business.
Guest:And he wanted me to be in the fur business and diamond business.
Guest:Oh, they were ready to take you in, huh?
Guest:Oh, they took me right in.
Guest:Took me right in.
Guest:And him and he was married to this beautiful woman.
Guest:And they had a little boy and a little girl.
Guest: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.
Guest:So it was a connection for him.
Guest:Did you live with them?
Guest:I didn't live with them, but I saw them all the time.
Guest:Oh, they're a big part of your life.
Guest:And then he went on over the next few years to pull off the biggest swindle in Canadian history.
Guest:Which was what?
Guest:it was ponzi before there was ponzi before mr ponzi came along yeah he pulled off this incredible swindle yeah and then my connection to the underworld uh-huh became huge yeah yeah and how old were you i it was from it starting when i was 13 and it went on up until i was 20. your connection to the canadian underworld
Guest: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
Guest:what it needed to happen and people got very restless yeah and so he had to resort to bringing in these heads of the the mob yeah to protect him and to hold everybody off in the meantime until because his idea was I'm gonna take this money I'm gonna make a bunch of money yeah
Guest:And everybody's going to do good with this.
Guest:And then the family, me and the Cleggerman family, we're going to start a legitimate insurance business or finance company and be like the Bronfmans in Montreal that started Seagrams and started out as bootleggers.
Marc:So that was the big plan.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Did he end up in jail?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:So where's the music at this point?
Guest:So I'm telling him and I'm telling my relatives, I feel a strong connection to music.
Guest:And they're like, yeah?
Guest:I was like, yeah, like rock and roll music.
Guest:They're like, rock and roll music?
Guest:What is that?
Guest:It was like, you know, what is this crazy idea that you're talking about?
Guest:So what, this is the late 50s?
Guest:And they were like, oh, wait a minute.
Guest:You mean show business?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Ah.
Guest:Yeah, sure.
Guest:Oh, I see.
Guest:I understand show business.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But it isn't like that crazy rock and roll people, is it?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It was a funny thing.
Marc:Well, yeah, they understood show business.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But the new music was the crazy kids.
Guest:Yeah, crazy kids.
Marc:It hadn't become show business yet.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Was it the late 50s you're talking here?
Guest:This is early 60s.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:Up to the mid 60s.
Guest: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.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Because everything can settle down.
Guest:They can get the money to figure it out.
Guest:Right.
Guest:All this kind of.
Guest:And when they get out of prison, I'm now playing with Bob Dylan.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So they come and see us playing at a big arena.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And everything and thousands of people and all this.
Guest:And now they're like, wait a minute, wait a minute.
Guest:How do we get in on this?
Guest:How do we become a part of this?
Guest:Maybe the kid needs help.
Guest:This looks like good show business here.
Guest:And did they?
Guest:No.
Guest:It was too late.
Guest:That ship had sailed.
Guest:That's right.
Marc:But how do you get, let's put 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.
Marc:So you're getting proficient at guitar over your teen years, right?
Marc:How do you get your first gig?
Marc:What's the first band?
Guest:I'm in a bunch of bands around the Toronto area.
Guest:And one of the groups that I'm in, we open for Ronnie Hawkins and the Hawks.
Guest:like a Sunday dance.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Because they play clubs during the week.
Guest:Where's he from, Ronnie Hawkins?
Guest:Arkansas.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:They were all from Arkansas.
Guest:So it's a big tour.
Guest:He's on the road.
Guest:He's on the road, and they play clubs, and they play some one-nighters like this dance.
Guest:Did he have any hits?
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:No, he was a big rockabilly guy.
Guest:So was it regional or national hits?
Guest:National.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:No, no.
Guest:He was doing really, really well.
Guest:I feel bad I don't know more.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:No, but it was at that time.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:This is like 1959.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:1960.
Guest:The original Rockabilly guys.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:What are the hits?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I think his biggest hit was Mary Lou, and another one called 40 Days, and another one called Southern Love.
Guest:So anyway, but he was an incredible performer.
Guest:and had a crackerjack group.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:The Hawks were amazing.
Guest:And it was mind-blowing to me.
Guest:And so when we played on this same gig with them... What was your outfit called?
Guest:The swedes.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:Matching outfits?
Guest:In some of the groups, in the group Robbie and the Robots, we had matching outfits.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So this was a door opening, seeing Ronnie Hawkins and the Hawks.
Guest:And they're all from the South.
Guest:They're all the authentic, real thing.
Guest:And this is in Canada, right?
Guest:So I want to hang around and have some of this rub off on me and learn what I could learn.
Guest:And so I managed to be able to be friends with them and hang around.
Guest:And one day, Ronnie Hawkins...
Guest:I heard him say, I got to go in the studio and make a new album, and I got to find some songs.
Guest:So I went off and I wrote two songs.
Guest:I came, played them for him, and he said, well, I'll be damned.
Guest:I'm going to record both of those songs.
Guest:And I was 15.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I thought, okay, we're getting somewhere.
Guest:That's amazing.
Guest:When I was a year, and he said, I got my eye on you, kid.
Guest:Something going on here.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:When I was 16, he asked me to come from Toronto down to Arkansas and
Guest:And he wanted to try me out and see if I had what he called the right potential to become a hawk.
Guest:On guitar?
Guest:On guitar.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But first, the bass player was leaving.
Guest:Right.
Guest:The bass player was going off to become a preacher down south.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:And he said to me... More money in it, I guess.
Guest:That's what he said.
Guest:So down here, preacher can do pretty damn good.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I was like, wow, this is the real thing.
Guest:So I tried out and I was too young.
Guest:I was 16 years old.
Marc:He just left Canada and your mom was like, see you later?
Guest:No, my mom was like, this is wrong.
Guest:You're not doing this.
Guest:And forget about it.
Guest:And the uncles, the Jewish family.
Guest:Everybody was like, you're out of your mind.
Guest:But you did it.
Guest:You dropped out of high school?
Guest:I did.
Guest:And I said, I convinced them and I sold it pretty well.
Guest:I said, if I don't do this, if I don't try this, I could be sorry for the rest of my life.
Guest:And that's something anyone can identify with.
Guest: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.
Guest:Okay, and made a deal.
Guest:They said, okay, you can try it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And they didn't believe, they thought I would be coming right back and going back to school.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:Because I was 16, you needed to be 21.
Guest:Sure, they thought, let him get it out of his system.
Guest:You needed to be 21 to play any of the places.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I was unexperienced.
Guest:And the big thing was, in a rockabilly band,
Guest:They don't have any Canadians.
Guest:It just doesn't exist.
Guest:Canadians barely exist.
Guest:They were all from the South, right?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest: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.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So Levon was in the original Hawks.
Guest:He was.
Guest:He was there since the beginning.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And Levon took me under his wing and helped me.
Guest:And I eventually, Ronnie Hawkins hired me when I was 16 years old.
Guest:To play bass?
Guest:To play bass.
Guest:And then the guitar player was leaving.
Guest:And then I took over on guitar.
Guest:So you were it.
Guest:You were playing rockabilly music.
Guest:That's fast shit.
Guest:Professional, on the road, the Chitlin circuit down south, 16 years old.
Guest:How many gigs you working?
Guest:We played usually seven nights a week.
Guest:For years?
Guest:For years.
Guest:And the more the better.
Guest: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 what was was is levon older than you was he older yeah yeah he was a few years older than me and where does rick come in when does that happen when do you guys detach
Guest:So after these guys from the south and from Arkansas, one by one, they want to stay home.
Guest:They don't want to be on the road anymore.
Guest:They got families, whatever.
Guest:One by one, they're leaving.
Guest:And so then Levon and I noticed this guy, and everybody just about happens.
Guest:the same way as i did that they were in a little opening band right that played for us yeah 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 yeah they don't have that in canada right yeah
Guest:so we see rick and we think this guy there 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
Guest:In Canada.
Guest:Everybody's in Canada now.
Guest:We see Richard Manuel and the piano player's leaving.
Guest:And Richard's a great piano player, but he can also... He's 17 years old and he sings like Bobby Blue Bland, right?
Guest:We're like...
Guest:Wow, where do you get one of those?
Guest:In Canada, right?
Guest:So we pull Richard into the fold.
Guest:Then we hear this musician like we've never heard anybody like this in our life, Garth Hudson.
Guest:Where was that?
Guest:In Canada.
Guest:What was he doing?
Guest:In London, Ontario.
Guest:He was playing in his uncle's funeral home.
Guest:How did you find him?
Guest:And because he also played in a little local group too.
Guest:Oh, okay.
Guest:And he came and heard us.
Guest:And one day he came and sat in with us.
Guest:And this guy could have been playing with Miles Davis.
Guest:Or the symphony orchestra.
Guest:Right.
Guest:He was that accomplished.
Guest:We'd never... And at the same time, there was something incredibly imaginative and funky about his playing as well.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So we were like, oh my God, if we only had somebody like that, it could make us all so much better.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he was like an unusual cool guy.
Guest:And it was hard to get him... Because we asked him to join us and he said no.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And we're like, what, what, you know?
Guest:Was he like, he already got a keyboard player?
Guest:No, because we were talking about having a piano and an organ player.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Like a gospel group.
Guest:Right.
Guest:No bands had that.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And it could give us a big sound having an organ in the group.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:Ronnie was into this, but we couldn't.
Guest:Levon and I said, let us talk to Garth.
Guest:So we went and told Garth about our lifestyle and that this was probably something he'd want to get in on and everything.
Guest:And he still said no.
Guest:And we were like, what?
Guest:is going on with this guy.
Guest:And finally we found out that his parents had dedicated so much to his musical education that if he joined a rock and roll band, they'd be like throwing it down the drain.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Right.
Guest: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.
Guest:Oh.
Guest:And he said, and that's a very prestigious position.
Guest:And they fell for it.
Guest:And we got Garth.
Guest:And then that was it.
Guest:Once we had this combination of people, that was what we were looking for.
Marc:And even for that band, that was like a big, very experimental approach.
Guest:Yes, it was.
Marc: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.
Marc:And he was willing to do it.
Guest:Oh, he loved the idea of having the hottest group around.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:The problem was that we were all younger.
Guest:We were younger and we were growing and we were growing quickly now and we outgrew Ronnie Hawkins.
Guest:and we musically went to another place, and we realized that we had to move on.
Guest:How did that go down?
Guest:It didn't go down very well in the beginning, as these things usually don't.
Guest:But eventually, it got all patched up, and we loved Ronnie, and he was the guy that helped put us together, and we owed a tremendous debt
Guest:And a lot of love to him.
Guest:So we ended up being friends forever.
Marc:But it's interesting, a guy like Ronnie Hawkins, I mean, outside of what you guys were doing, it seems that given that he was sort of not necessarily stuck, but committed to the music that he does, he could put another outfit together.
Guest:Yes, and that's what he did.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And you guys went on as what?
Marc:Levon and the Hawks.
Marc:Oh, he didn't mind you saying the Hawks, though.
Guest:But we were the Hawks.
Guest:Right.
Guest: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 and wherever we played, we had a following as the Hawks.
Guest:So we were just using that in the meantime.
Guest:And you were drawing.
Guest:And we were getting people coming to the clubs.
Guest:And we were good.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:And this was the early 60s still?
Marc:This is 64, 65.
Marc:So when you go to New York and stuff, were you aware of the scene that was going on there?
Marc:Were you like the folk scene or whatever was happening?
Marc:I mean-
Marc:Did you feel the other music around that was being processed through New York primarily?
Marc: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.
Marc:But New York was a place where people came to sort of exploit that to a degree and create, I guess at that time, the folk scene, right?
Yeah.
Guest:That was part of it.
Guest: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.
Guest:Sure, Lieber and Stoller, Carole King, Goffin and those guys, yeah.
Guest:Great stuff.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then in its own kind of underworld in New York and in Toronto too, there was this folk music uprising happening.
Guest:We were from the other side of the tracks.
Guest:Right.
Guest:We were playing R&B and rock and roll.
Guest:And on the other, the joints that we were playing in were really rough clubs, bars, right?
Guest:And the folk scene, they were playing in coffee houses.
Guest:There was nobody sipping cappuccinos where we played, right?
Guest:And so we thought, wow, this is for college kids over there or something on the other side of the tracks.
Guest:Right.
Guest:You know, we don't go over there, but sometimes they come over here, right?
Guest:And so it was just another thing.
Guest:And there was a bit of an irony then to actually hooking up with somebody like Bob Dylan, who was like the king of the folk music world.
Marc:Well, you were part of this whole transition, really, weren't you?
Marc:Oh, yeah, yeah.
Marc:So you're playing with the Hawks, and how does, who was it, Albert Grossman that roped you in?
Yeah.
Guest:It was Albert Grossman and we had a bit of a reputation out there.
Guest:Which is what?
Guest:Which is being a hot band that we really could play.
Guest:Cooks.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so people knew that and the word was out.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So amongst Albert Grossman and the people at his agency and Bob Dylan and everything, the word was on the street about these guys.
Guest:And in the beginning, I met with, I got a message to come and meet with Bob Dylan.
Guest:And I'd met him in passing with John Hammond Jr.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:John Hammond Jr.
Guest:took me to the recording studio to see a friend of his who was recording that day.
Guest:We go in the studio and this guy, Bob Dylan, that I don't know very much about, has just recorded a song called Like a Rolling Stone.
Guest:What was that, 64 or something?
Guest:65.
Guest:65, I think.
Marc:And his dad, John Hammond, Sr., was the producer, correct?
Guest:Was the guy who discovered.
Marc:Yeah, the A&R guy, the head of... Where was he at?
Marc:Columbia.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:Assigned him to Columbia.
Marc: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.
Marc:Was at that time, was there a sense that he's like, well, he's the boss's kid kind of thing?
Guest:No, no, there was...
Guest:I don't think John Hammond Jr.
Guest:and Sr.
Guest:got along that well because his parents had split up and he was on his mom's side.
Guest: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.
Marc:Well, it's interesting, because he recorded all those singers, and he's even part of the Springsteen story, and I think Billie Holiday, and he's a very famous guy.
Guest:See, he thought it was fine for Billie Holiday to sing blues.
Guest:He didn't think it was okay for his son.
Guest:I'm guessing at this.
Guest:Right, sure, I get you, I get you.
Guest:So you're up there with Jon Hamm, and you see Dylan in the studio.
Guest:So I meet him in passing.
Guest:Then, I don't know, a while later, I get a message to come and meet
Guest: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
Guest:And I said, well, maybe, because it was just really two dates he was talking about.
Guest:I said, if Levon can come too, he's like my partner.
Guest:If Levon can come too, maybe I could pull this off.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So they figured it out.
Guest:Levon and I played these two dates with him.
Guest:And they were like a nightmare, a musical nightmare.
Guest:Why?
Guest:We played at Forest Hills Stadium in New York at the Hollywood Bowl in LA.
Guest:And we didn't know what this routine was.
Guest:That people hated him going electric.
Guest:We'd only ever been electric.
Guest:We thought there was something funny about the idea of going electric.
Guest:But we understood.
Guest:The thing.
Guest:But people threw stuff at us, booed us, and charged the stage.
Guest:I mean, physically... Fokies charged the stage?
Guest:Charged the stage.
Guest:To do what?
Guest:With anger and venom coming out of their mouths.
Guest:It was like, oh, my God, they really hate this.
Guest:So we play these two dates, and Bob says...
Guest:That went pretty well.
Guest:How would you like to do a whole tour?
Guest:So we were like, wow, this guy, he's bold.
Guest:I got to say he's bold.
Guest:Were you a fan?
Guest:I didn't know that much about his music yet.
Guest:i'd heard a couple of things right i heard a song somewhere at one point song that he did called oxford town oxford town oxford yeah yeah and i love 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
Guest:I was following what we were into, southern music.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:So after we did these dates and he said, let's do this tour, that's when we said, no, no, no, we're a group.
Guest:right and we're with this group right so that ain't gonna happen unless the whole group does right and we've got to even see whether they want to 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
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it was like, I don't know.
Guest:We're playing a club.
Guest:We're on the other side of the track still, right?
Guest:So these worlds, so finally, he comes and hears us play and says, let's do this together.
Guest:And we think, this is so weird.
Guest:Let's check it out.
Guest:Let's see what happens.
Marc:But when you were at the studio and he was laying down like a rolling stone or whatever, was Bloomfield there and Al Cooper and everybody was there?
Marc:Yep.
Marc:So you saw them, like, that music made sense to you.
Guest:I thought, this is interesting.
Guest:There's something going on here.
Guest:Right, right, right.
Guest:You know?
Guest:I thought it's a little disorganized, but it's fresh.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:And I've never heard anything quite like this before.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And boy, does he have a bunch of words.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Right?
Marc:But that band, because that band on that album, on that song, that's definitely where you guys were going, or part of it, right?
Guest:Well, that was where...
Guest:the combination of musicians that he was putting together, that's where they were going.
Guest:And so that opened a door to this.
Guest: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, some of the songs that were his new songs now that he did with musicians in the studio.
Guest:So it was really a discovery process.
Guest:So you said yes to the gig.
Guest:We said, let's check this out.
Guest:I was fascinated by him as a writer, as what was happening in the world musically, and as a person.
Guest:I really liked him too.
Guest:And we had a great time together.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So I was saying, let's check this out, guys.
Guest:And so we hooked it up, and we went and played, and people booed and threw stuff at us every night where we went.
Guest:You know what it reminded me of?
Guest:How many dates?
Guest:Oh, well, we toured all over the United States and Canada.
Guest:Getting booed.
Guest:All over Australia and all over Europe.
Marc:And the famous Royal Albert Hall was you guys?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And every night, everywhere, this happened.
Guest:And I thought, what a strange way to make a buck.
Guest:What were the other guys saying?
Guest:They were saying, this is really crazy.
Guest:And at some point... Could you feel the fucking hate in the room when you... Oh, yeah.
Marc:And you guys were playing it.
Marc:You had to enjoy it.
Marc:You had to do the job.
Marc:But you knew they were just sitting there with sour faces.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Fuck these guys.
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:No, no.
Guest:In some cases, it was so violent.
Guest:The backlash was so violent.
Guest:And you had to think, as anybody would, this is not going over very well with the audience.
Guest:Maybe we should make some adjustments, right?
Guest:Right.
Guest:And the adjustment was from the Bob Dylan camp.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You should get rid of these guys.
Guest:They're ruining everything.
Guest:They love you, but they hate these guys.
Guest:So we were like, whoa, look at the position this has put us in.
Guest:This is awkward.
Guest:This is really, really strange.
Guest: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
Guest:And when I was listening to that, I said to the other guys and I said to Bob, they're wrong.
Guest:This is good.
Guest:They're wrong.
Guest:The world is wrong.
Guest:And we got to win this battle.
Guest:And we went out and played.
Guest:against this hatred and all of this thing knowing this is a musical revolution right and this is the kind of 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
Marc: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 you're like here we go here we go
Guest:Here we go.
Guest:And you know what?
Guest:It even reminded me at one point I had this weird dream 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.
Guest:You were the heel?
Guest:And the bad guy who would come up with a black mask on.
Guest:He'd come out and everybody would boo him.
Guest:He knew what he was going out there for.
Guest:I felt like a wrestler going into battle.
Marc: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.
Marc:Right.
Marc:I mean, like you say, you you lost a battle, but you won the war.
Marc:Did it level off to where people were happy to see you?
Guest: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 all the musicians, all the bands in England, they were all there in the audience in the different boxes and everything.
Guest: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.
Guest:So after the tour,
Guest:We come back to the United States.
Guest:And again, Bob says, well, we're thinking about putting together another chore.
Guest:What do you think?
Guest:We're like, wow, this guy, I'm telling you, this guy, he's either really right or really wrong.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So we were talking about that, but that's when he had his motorcycle accident.
Guest:And so we couldn't go in tour anymore.
Marc:Really?
Marc:So he was going to keep fighting it.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And then he got hurt.
Marc:And then you guys, that's where Big Pink happens.
Marc:That's right.
Marc:So he's got to lay back for health reasons.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And then you guys really start to...
Guest: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
Guest:was an incredible, life-changing experience.
Guest:Talk about build thick skin.
Guest:But now it was time for us to do our thing, what we were, our calling, right?
Guest:And that's what Big Pink was all about.
Guest:And was Albert Grossman your manager?
Guest: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.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:That was his pitch?
Guest:Right.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:So it was like, wow, he doesn't even know.
Guest: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 yeah he was as shocked as anybody was uh-huh so was bob dylan you know 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
Marc:And then you were your own guys, and then you decided on the name.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:The band.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:We'd been together.
Guest:We'd been together for too many years to start thinking of a silly name.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Richard Manuel talks about that in the last waltz.
Guest:Oh, yeah, yeah, right.
Guest:Yeah, the crackers.
Guest:Yeah, he said, what are we going to call it?
Guest:The strawberry overcoats or whatever.
Guest:It was too silly.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And it was at time.
Guest:And at the time, too, playing with Bob, everybody referred to us as the band.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:It was going on two years.
Guest:We were so used to that.
Guest:We couldn't get off that track.
Guest:And it was the closest thing we could think of to not following a trendy, silly thing at all.
Guest:This is straightforward.
Marc:This is about the music.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And you guys at that point after Big Pink were getting along...
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:No, we always got along.
Guest:Oh, you did?
Guest:Good.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, there was some crazy periods in there, you know, just because a lot of experimenting with drugs was going on.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:How did you guys avoid that?
Marc:Because I know like, you know, when you talk about, you know, Bloomfield or Butterfield and, you know, and I guess you couldn't like heroin was everywhere, right?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest: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
Marc:But like, I always wonder about that.
Marc:Like, what what is the concern level?
Marc: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.
Marc:I mean, that's a big commitment.
Marc:And, you know, and it's devastating.
Marc:I mean, in in the unit, were you concerned?
Guest:Yeah, scared and concerned.
Guest:And I was no angel myself.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I wasn't standing there with a ruler, you know, measuring things.
Guest:Of course.
Guest:And everybody was experimenting in all kinds of ways.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So you can't get on your high horse too much.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And I guess they never really realized, you know, I mean, you could look at the jazz age, but I guess that generation, you know, still assumed it was a party.
Marc:And when it got dark, it was probably a surprise.
Marc:Right.
Guest:was almost part of the ritual at a point.
Guest:You've got to walk through this door to know if it's real or not.
Marc:But you guys kind of journeyed on, and then you made the next record, the band, the record, the second record.
Marc:You did Out Here?
Guest:Yeah, we did it in Sammy Davis Jr.
Guest:'s pool house.
Guest:We rented his house.
Guest:Was he living there?
Guest:No, no, no, no.
Guest:We assisted he move out while we were making the record.
Marc:Did you meet him?
Marc:Did you have a relationship with him?
Guest:No, no, no.
Guest:It was just a house that he had owned.
Guest:Oh, okay.
Guest:And so we just got it through a rental agency.
Guest:Right, yeah, yeah.
Guest:And it was a house that we could all live in and once again making our own atmosphere and turning the pool house.
Guest:which you could tell this pool house had such a vibe of Rat Pack vibe to it.
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:You know, the way the mirrors were and everything in the place.
Guest:It wasn't Big Pink.
Guest:No.
Guest:And so we had some work to do on that to make it.
Guest:But it was like making an atmosphere that had our own character to it.
Guest:And the record had its own character to it.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And the sound and everything.
Marc:So you weren't affected by L.A.
Marc:necessarily.
Marc:You still brought the unit was so tight.
Marc:And once you got the decorations and the shit together, you guys were your own landscape.
Marc:You were your own country in a way.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Just locked in.
Guest:Yeah, we made it our own island.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it was a great time and a great experience.
Guest:But we were inside our own underground.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:And we made this music, and it had no connection to the outside world.
Marc:Isn't that interesting?
Marc:And were you guys going out at night?
Marc:Were you seeing the doors?
Marc:Were you seeing Hendrix or Joplin or any of those people?
Guest:I went and saw Hendrix during this period.
Guest:Yeah, we went out sometimes, but we were working.
Guest:And we mostly recorded at night.
Guest:We would start in the afternoon, kind of get a plan on what we were going to do, have a bite to eat with the family and everything.
Guest:It was very family-oriented, the whole vibe.
Guest:And then after dinner, we would go down and we would start making music.
Marc:It's astounding because the outside, the trend of music of the time was not infiltrating.
Marc:You guys were doing your own trajectory completely.
Marc:You weren't trying to keep up with anybody.
Guest:We didn't even know that we weren't connecting with anybody.
Guest:We didn't understand that.
Guest:We were just trying to do something really good.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And it was in the songs that I was writing...
Guest: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 and i was trying to do something really good wow and you did you did amazing things you did that that album that second record that had a couple big ones on there
Guest:Yeah, it was part of another part of a musical revolution that had such big pink in the band album and other stuff that we did too, ended up having a big effect on the course of music, on the direction of music, on songwriting, on stuff you could do that nobody realized you could do before.
Guest: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.
Guest:It didn't happen before.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And so that just rubbed off on us.
Guest:And we thought, that's what you do.
Guest:Right.
Guest:You break the rules.
Guest:Right.
Guest:You change things.
Guest:It was time later on...
Guest:when we realize we were rebelling against the rebellion that other people thought who were the rebels out there that we were rebelling against them.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:We're just making... We think what you're doing is trendy.
Guest:Right.
Guest:We think what you're doing is obvious.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And we're just going to do this.
Guest:We're just going to do something, whatever it is.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And whatever our calling is, we're going to follow that path.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:When you look back on those first two records, which songs are you the most proud of?
Marc:I mean, that's a hard question, I guess.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Different songs for different reasons.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I really liked a song that I wrote called Rag Mama Rag.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:I'd never heard that before.
Guest:I never heard anything quite like that before.
Guest:I was drawn to that feel.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And the combination of the funkiness and the mountain and all of the stuff that was in that gumbo.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:It seems like the dead sort of took off from you guys a little bit.
Marc:You probably laid it pretty... I bet your record's kind of Blue Garcia's mind, I'm imagining.
Marc:He told us that.
Marc:He did?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Oh, okay, that makes sense.
Marc:Because Rag Mom and Rag is like, they could cover that song.
Guest:Yeah, and they might have.
Guest:They covered other songs, but I lost track of which ones they did.
Guest:But yeah, you know, they've...
Marc: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 lot 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
Guest:that was part of it yeah yeah and it was a nice thing to be able to to share something that that you thought oh that inspired somebody that's good and i hear it today yeah all over the place still what what leads the decision to to to disband
Guest:Well, we had been together on the road for 16 years, and it seemed like we had done it all.
Guest:We had been there and back, and we had played the roughest, meanest little honky-tonks known to mankind, and we had played the biggest concerts in the world.
Guest:So for that, it wasn't like there's a lot to be learned out here now.
Marc:And also you did like you did, you know, big, musically you experimented with everything.
Marc:You know, like, you know, you did, you brought in horns, you brought in, you know, you did everything.
Guest:We'd been around the block.
Guest:It felt like that.
Guest:But also at the same time, there was a thing happening out there on the road.
Guest:And with the interference of drugs, of hard drugs, it was becoming an unknown what was going to show up that night.
Guest:It got dangerous.
Guest:And Richard Manuel was really struggling.
Guest: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.
Guest:That's why it was a real band.
Guest:And so when there was one flat tire, it made everything.
Guest:So it got to a place where I thought, we've got to go underground.
Guest:We've got to get out of the public eye.
Guest:And we've got to help one another and fix this thing before somebody dies.
Guest:Because so many of our friends are dying and have died.
Guest:So we've got to do something.
Guest:And then I thought of, what if we bring this to a beautiful musical conclusion?
Guest:and we have this celebration of what we love in this music and our friends and all that.
Guest:What if we do something so beautiful like that and then we do our thing and go underground and rediscover what our calling is.
Guest:And to everybody it seemed like
Guest:That's the right thing to do.
Guest:That's a beautiful thing to do.
Guest:And so the idea of putting together this celebration, which we end up calling the last walls, it had to do with the times, that era.
Guest:It felt like the end of an era.
Guest:It felt like something needed to be brought to a conclusion.
Guest:In everything.
Guest:And around the outskirts of what we were bringing to a conclusion, it felt like, there was another kind of revolution stirring of hip hop.
Guest:and punk.
Guest:It was just a little, just a tiny bit of it seeping under the door at that time.
Guest:Was it 76?
Guest:Yeah, the end of 76.
Guest: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.
Guest:And then I had the audacity to go and ask Martin Scorsese to direct the movie of it.
Guest:Just because you were a fan of his?
Guest:I was.
Guest:I loved the way that he used music in his movies.
Guest:I could tell there was something going on here.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:But by audacity, I mean he was in the middle of directing a movie.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest: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 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 all this stuff but he was like but i i have no choice i have to do this yeah
Guest:And he figured out another complete underground way of leading, and we decided to do this over the Thanksgiving weekend when everybody would be off doing something and we could maybe sneak this in.
Guest:And his preparation,
Guest:for the concert is phenomenal there is a collector's edition i have it the the shooting script oh crazy isn't it crazy crazy and you see that the last waltz 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
Guest:He wanted it to be a movie.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it's great.
Guest:It was great to watch it again.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he said, I don't particularly like these concert film things with the shaky cameras and ugly lights and everything.
Guest:We want to make it like a movie inspired by Michael Powell.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:All of these names that he was bringing out.
Guest:And it was like, all right, now we're on the right track.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:And that began, outside of creating that amazing film, that began your relationship with him, I guess.
Guest:Yep.
Guest:And it's an ongoing thing.
Guest:We have such a fantastic time.
Guest:You score some and you help them select songs.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's great.
Guest:And every movie that he does is different.
Guest:It's a new challenge.
Guest:You've been involved with like a dozen of them, haven't you?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he's like, he's a live wire.
Guest:Oh yeah, he is.
Guest:And he's still, he's just one of the great masters of movie making in history.
Guest:And so I just love what he does.
Guest:And every time he pulls a rabbit out of the hat.
Marc:And do you find songs that he's never heard and vice versa?
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:And that must be part of the fun.
Marc:Oh, it's great fun.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Now, like, in looking back, and then you got your solo work.
Marc:I remember your first solo album.
Marc:It was a very big deal.
Marc:I remember, because I remember the promo, the press on it was that you were going to draw from...
Marc: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 right this is what robbie's up to you know this is the next thing you know yeah but it was a it was a popular record yeah 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
Marc:I don't, how many have I done?
Guest:Like solo.
Guest:I don't know, maybe eight or something?
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:You know, I'm in the middle of a new record right now.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's going good.
Guest:Good.
Guest:It's going good, yeah.
Marc:And when you think about, like, I know there were problems with Levon over this or that and with Rick.
Marc:I mean, how did that stuff end up resolving itself?
Marc:Then Richard died.
Marc:I mean, like, these guys, you know, and Garth is still around, right?
Marc:Yes, he is.
Marc:And was there love lost?
Yeah.
Guest:Not for me.
Guest:I never had a problem with Levon.
Guest:In all of the years that we played together, we never had a sour word, ever.
Marc:It was years after the band.
Marc:And they had been touring as the band and holding on.
Marc:It seems that once the breakup happened, a lot of them could not, well, I mean, one or two of them could not escape the life.
Guest: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 they called me and said yeah you know we've decided that we we want to go out make some music and we need to make a living yeah and i was like and they said do you mind you know we're going to use the name the band yeah
Guest:i said i would never stand in the way yeah of you making a living and doing whatever you want and i understand that calling and i had decided not to join that yeah because i still felt i still felt this worry i still felt this strain inside and i was worried about richard still and it came unfortunately you know it you know richard did end up dying and uh
Guest:But anyway, the thing, like years later, I heard that Levon said these things that I did this or I didn't do that.
Guest:About songwriting credits?
Guest:Yeah, stuff like that.
Guest:And it was... I never responded to it.
Guest:It was so silly that...
Guest:I couldn't even respond to it.
Guest:And I knew that Levon, he had this thing inside of him and I knew it was in there that it was always somebody's fault for something if things weren't going too well.
Guest:But anyway, I loved Levon and I thought he was an amazing talent.
Guest:The closest thing I ever had to a brother and all of that.
Guest:So when he said these things, I just couldn't give it...
Guest:you know yeah yeah 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 yeah and i was heartbroken when levon died and i got to see him before he passed away i thought he was doing much better
Guest:I thought he was on the road to recovery.
Guest:Were you guys okay at that point?
Guest:Did you guys settle it?
Guest:I was always okay.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:Was he all right then by the end?
Guest:I went to see him.
Guest:I went to see him and held his hand before he passed away.
Guest:It takes two people to be in a feud.
Guest:I wasn't interviewed.
Guest:I thought he was terrific, but he had issues.
Guest: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.
Guest:I just couldn't make myself be upset about it.
Guest:How's Garth doing?
Guest:And Garth is amazing.
Guest:He is such an incredible talent.
Guest:He lives on a different planet than everybody else.
Guest:But he is such an amazing...
Guest:Like I say in this book with Garth, God only made one of those.
Guest:He's extraordinary.
Guest: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 because there's something in there because I always knew great ways to show Garth off.
Marc:Oh, good.
Marc:To the world.
Guest:Oh, good.
Marc: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.
Marc: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.
Marc:I mean, he lives out there.
Marc:And it's so clear in The Last Waltz and everything else that the road means something.
Marc:It is both light and dark, and it's a hell of a place to spend your life in a way.
Marc:What do you make of Bob Dylan at this point?
Marc:I mean, it's a beautiful thing.
Marc:He can't need the money.
Marc:He obviously needs the road.
Marc:And where does he stand in your mind and in your heart?
Marc:Do you have a relationship with him still?
Guest:Well, I think that...
Guest:There was a long time when Bob didn't go out in public and play.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Many years.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then he had came back to him and then, you know, he went and did some more.
Guest:And then he found...
Guest:He found that it was a big part of what he loved.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so he's just going to stay out there until, you know.
Guest:Yep.
Guest:Until whatever happens, happens.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He's going to stay out there as long as he can.
Guest:And I can only imagine that he just loves it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it's who he is.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I applaud it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Do you talk to him?
Guest:I can't.
Guest:How do you talk to him?
Guest:He's on the road all the time.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I've made some calls.
Guest:I've sent some messages to him.
Guest:You know, just saying, you know, we got to catch up sometime.
Guest:But it's like, whoops, there he goes again.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:You know, now he's over here.
Guest:Nope, he's back in Australia.
Guest:It's crazy, right?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so, God bless.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, it was great talking to you, sir.
Guest:Thank you.
Guest:Really fun.
Marc:I thought that was great.
Marc:It was great talking to him.
Marc:I like hearing about that time.
Marc:I like hearing the arc of his life and the arc of music.
Marc:And I hope you enjoyed it.
Marc:Go to WTFpod.com for all your WTF needs.
Marc:Tour dates.
Marc:Get on the mailing list.
Marc:Posters.
Marc:Contact info.
Marc:All right.
Marc:I got to do the show for Thursday.
Marc:Because I'm...
Marc:I'm going to take a little break.
Marc:Haven't had one in a little while.
Marc:So on Thursday, if I seem detached or my tone is not right for God knows what will happen this week, it's because I'm away.
Marc:I'll be back.
Marc:All right?
Marc:Be a good American.
Marc:Boomer lives!
Boomer lives!
you