re: Robbie Robertson RIP

You will note that I said above that the tragedy of the group is that Richard Manuel’s demons consumed him and he stopped writing.

Plus in your cut and paste from Wiki you picked up the vocalists too, Kingdom Come, Caledonia, Weight and Chest Fever were all Robbie’s solo writing credits.

What’s your beef with Robbie about the HoF?

And I stand by my statement that his first solo album was an absolute masterpiece. But people diss it because it wasn’t like The Band, and he never intended it to be, he’d been there and done that.

This has turned into a pee match because someone pointed out the fact that he wasn't the nicest person in the world.

Back to the topic... Listen to his first solo album. Although it's not "Band level", it's really good.

Showdown at Big Sky is one of the best songs of the 80s.

He was the RELATIVE adult in the room in 1970-71 when Levon and Rick were spending all their money on China White and Richard was seeing how much Grand Marnier one human being could drink in a 24-hour period. Never said he divided the fishes and fed the multitudes or was without sin himself.

I stand by my statement that if he hadn’t “taken charge,” the thing would’ve imploded after the brown album.

And I fail to see how he was such an “a-hole.” He simply came from a different place and a different background and had different intellectual interests and pursuits than the others. And he always had his eyes on the movies, years before Big Pink he was hanging out with the stars of Ingmar Bergman movies and studying scripts, etc.

I understand people will view that as pretentious because they gravitate to good old boys from the sticks like Levon and Rick. There’s a scene in Robbie’s book where he’s trying to talk to Levon about group issues and getting into the studio and Levon ain’t paying attention because he’s watching an Arkansas football game on TV, stoned out of his gourd.

And absolutely, Robbie and Scorsese were on a race in the late 70s to see how much blow a human being could do in a 24-hour period. He supposedly addressed it all in the second volume of his memoirs which I hope he got finished.

But he got past it.

I’ve honestly never seen the movie so I can’t pass judgment. I need to watch it.

I just hate to see Robbie and for that matter John Fogerty, someone else I greatly respect and admire, tarred as somehow A-holes or traitors to “the brotherhood” because of the way the dynamics of their respective groups played out.

The reality is that the five individuals who became The Band when assembled together made some absolutely gorgeous and majestic and groundbreaking music. But the music was the only thing those five individuals had in common as human beings and eventually that isn’t enough to keep disparate people together.

For what it’s worth, Daniel Lanois who worked with Robbie on his first solo album said this in Rolling Stone:

I wish there was more guitar playing on that album. I don’t have any regrets, but it might be nice if there was a blazing moment or two there. But I have a feeling that by the time I went to work with him, his mind had gone to other places, with storylines and working with Martin Scorsese and acting. His perspective had widened considerably beyond the old rock & roll guitar in the back of the blues club. People move on. He wasn’t that guitar-slinger he was when he was playing with Hawkins. One thing I learned is you can’t ask people to go back, you have to look forward. And I liked that about Robbie. He wasn’t interested in adapting any of the nuances had been created so beautifully with the Band.

I’ll also note that Robbie was BFF with Scorsese for three times as long as he was associated with The Band.

I would make the counter argument that Robertson and Byrne both had the absolute right to move on from their groups if they simply had outgrown them.

That’s what I meant about people having an idealized view of the dynamics of a rock group. I don’t think it’s like once you’re in you have to be in forever.

Things change. People change.

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the leader of that group, although he had many varied and different outside interests, stayed committed to the primacy of the band no matter what, and revenues were shared somehow among all the members. No one who ever worked for or played with the Grateful Dead would ever say or think that Jerry Garcia either abandoned or discarded any one of them.

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Unfortunately this mentality is also what killed jerry and the Grateful Dead. The need to support so many members of the crew and band pushed the band back on the road after brent died and contributed to jerry’s heroin addiction.

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PublixSubs

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You ever tried the Cubano?

You won’t make much money but you’ll get more pussy than Frank Sinatra.