The recorder is working and Robertson’s been too. “Talking-one-two, talking-talking-talking,” Robertson says into MOJO’s tape recorder, checking levels in a raspy baritone.
Propped against a wall is the Martin D-28 acoustic on which he wrote The Weight and in a corner the Fender Twin Reverb amp that survived Woodstock and The Last Waltz. A tale lit-up by diamond smuggling uncles, gay pot dealers, and even an actual armed robbery he planned to commit, his testimony was a wild witness statement from rock’s frontier phase, but it veiled and aftermath of bitterness and heartache.ĭECKED OUT IN AN ALL-BLACK suit, Robbie Robertson exudes elegance and a well-read intelligence, – the latter all the more fascinating given his teenage education chicken- pickin’ in honky-tonks where – in the words of his first major employer Ronnie Hawkins – “You had to show your razor and puke twice before they’d let you in the door.” We’re meeting at his small office in a nondescript Los Angeles neighbourhood. In 2017, MOJO’s Michael Simmons sat down to hear Robertson’s story.
Music that dug deep below those foundations to uncover a new musical lexicon and vision of American music, one steeped in its rich cultural history. As guitarist and songwriter for The Band, Robbie Robertson helped shift the very foundations upon which rock and roll was rooted, both as sideman to Bob Dylan when he went electric and through his own group’s remarkable music.
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