Robbie Robertson has too much to do to be sitting around. “I had imagined at this period in my musical journey I’d be sipping lemonade on a beach somewhere,” he tells me. “I’m way too busy. But I’m sure having a good time.”
Busy is an understatement. There’s an album, Cinematic, that’s tangled up with his decades-long gig scoring Martin Scorsese’s mobster fever dreams — The Irishman this time around — and a new documentary, Once Were Brothers, that retraces the blood, guts, and flannel of The Band’s history. All this while his beloved “brown album” turns 50 and gets the deluxe edition treatment. “We started seeing a lot of other people dressing like that,” Robbie says of The Band’s Civil War mountain-man aesthetic. “And we thought, oh my God… that was an accident. We didn’t want to get caught up in some trendiness.”
If you’re wondering what it’s like when Marty calls, think exacting, trial-and-error perfectionism. “Marty’s very specific about not wanting a traditional movie score,” Robbie says. “When the tears start falling, the strings come up? That’s not his beat. I had to throw away a lot of my ideas before I was left with something that turned out to be a bull’s-eye.”
One of those bull’s-eyes is “Remembrance,” a haunted pulse that closes both The Irishman and Cinematic. But it’s “I Hear You Paint Houses” — the blood-soaked code for mob hits — that he turned into a duet with Van Morrison. “When Van Morrison comes to town, he often calls me,” Robbie says casually, like they’re just two lads with nothing better to do than write songs about contract killers.
Even in 2019, Robertson’s got something to say about the mess we’ve made of brotherhood. Let Love Reign feels ripped from the 60s dream of peace but soaked in present-day acid. “This darkness of hate is just a horrifying thing,” he sighs. “When I was first making records, there was something in the air about unity… and you just see that going up in flames.”
So he’ll keep writing, scoring, singing — and maybe finish that second autobiography. “The publishers told me, ‘You can’t write a memoir that ends when you’re 32. You got work to do.’”
No lemonade yet.
For an in-depth conversation about Sinematic, The Irishman, The Band’s legacy, and Robertson’s projects, listen to the full interview above and then check out the track below.
