Testimony

Robbie Robertson

Book - 2016

In this captivating memoir, Robbie Robertson shares the journey that led him to some of the most pivotal events in music history. It's the story of a time when rock 'n' roll became life, when music legends moved through the same streets and hotel rooms, and above all, the profound friendship among five young men who together created a new kind of popular music.

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Subjects
Genres
Biographies
Published
New York : Crown Archetype [2016]
Language
English
Main Author
Robbie Robertson (-)
Edition
First edition
Physical Description
500 pages, 8 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations ; 24 cm
ISBN
9780307889782
Contents unavailable.
Review by New York Times Review

levon helm was dying of cancer, and Robbie Robertson went to see him. "I sat with Levon for a good while," he noted on Facebook, "and thought of the incredible and beautiful times we had together." Helm died a few days later - April 19, 2012 - and the deathbed scene became a part of the Band's story, alongside all that happened on tour with Bob Dylan, in the basement of Big Pink, up on Cripple Creek and during the Last Waltz. Did Robbie apologize for (as Levon had it) breaking up the band and making off with the songwriting royalties, or did he absolve the exfriend who had slagged him baselessly for three decades, and tell him it made no difference in the end? The web surged with conjecture, and the quarrel showed up on listicles of the Great Feuds of All Time. That was strange. More than any other rock group, the Band made music about people other than themselves: unfaithful servants, Confederate Army vets, lonesome Suzie. They gave other musicians center stage at their own farewell concert. Better for them to sing about some old friends feuding than to feud themselves. Robertson understands this. The deathbed scene doesn't figure in "Testimony," but the friendship that made the break with Helm so awful is present at every point in this autobiography. "I felt a hand tap me on the shoulder, reminding me to tread lightly and try to protect my brothers," he writes of the moment in 1976 when he realized that three of the five Band members were hooked on heroin. "I kept harping to Levon, to Richard and Rick, about finding some kind of sanctuary where we could stop riding so close to the edge." Obviously, Robertson is getting the last word with this long book. And yet his strong point of view is offset by the tenderness he shows, and his stress on his own experience is set within a craftsman's effort to tell the story whole - an effort to do justice to their adventures as young men, talented, stylish, successful and lucky, who knew the joy of creative friendship besides. "Testimony" ends where "The Last Waltz" ends, with the Band disbanding, and like the film it doesn't establish beyond a doubt that the Band had to break up instead of just taking a break. No, this book (another may follow) is about beginnings, not endings: It's a full-dress drama of initiation, as Robertson comes to know the rock 'n' roll life with the singer Ronnie Hawkins; American roots with Helm (a proud Arkansan); fame and genius through Dylan; artistic fulfillment with the Band; and the perils of adulthood as the group is undone by family life, fights over money, drug abuse and the "lifestyles of the crooked and the bent." As the book opens Robertson is 16 and "headed to the holy land of rock 'n' roll," having sold his Stratocaster to pay for a train ticket from Toronto to Arkansas. Before long he brings the story back home. He grew up in Ontario, the son of a Mohawk-Cayuga mother and - as he later learned - a Jewish father, a cardsharp who was struck and killed by a motorist early in her pregnancy. Once word was out that Robertson's father was Alex Klegerman, not Jim Robertson, his Jewish uncles Natie and Morrie ("products of Toronto's Jewish underworld") decided to look out for him. He had quit school to join the Hawks, backing Hawkins, who had come north from Arkansas with the young drummer Levon Helm to work Canada's club circuit. The Hawks took on musicians who would form the Band - the bassist Rick Danko, the pianist Richard Manuel, the organist and all-around virtuoso Garth Hudson - and gained a reputation as the best R&B band north of Memphis, and the hardest-working. The Beatles were playing the club circuit in Hamburg then, and Malcolm Gladwell recently made the episode evidence for his "10,000-hour rule" of achievement - but Gladwell, proud product of Ontario, could just as well have used the Hawks. Weed, women, Cadillacs; a drug bust; nights hearing Muddy, Otis and Aretha: The Hawks spent 10,000 hours enjoying the hell out of life, too. Helm told many of those stories in his 1993 autobiography, "This Wheel's on Fire." Yet coming a quarter-century later, Robertson's telling seems more vivid, not less so. One reason is that Robertson - like his card-counting father - has a strong memory and a gift for recalling, or providing, dialogue, whole scenes of it: " ' This here's Bertram,' said Jim Fred, gesturing to the guy with the rifle. . . . "Bertram looked at me, looked at Levon, then looked at the Caddy. Finally he said, 'Well, you sure as hell ain't the po-lice, with a ride like that.' "'Go on, sit in it,' offered Levon. 'It still has that new-car smell.' "'No, if I sit in it, I'm gonna wanna keep it,' said Bertram. 'And then I'd have to kill you.' " Another is that Robertson, the Band's main writer, wasn't one of their main singers. Levon's book was related in the country-fried voice familiar from his vocals. Robertson's book is written with a full range of literary devices. His buddy Levon's pride, and its cousins anger and spite, are heard through all that dialogue: The voice comes through loud and clear. When Bob Dylan enters the story, Robbie's account parts sharply from Levon's. As Levon told it, Dylan hired Robbie as a guitarist, Robbie proposed Levon as the drummer and Levon confronted Dylan's manager and insisted, "Take us all, or don't take anybody." As Robbie tells it, he was the one who urged Dylan to hire the whole band. "'It's a kind of all-or-nothing situation,' I told Bob." It's a difference of perspective that would be felt all down the line of the band's subsequent history. As he recounts the making of "The Basement Tapes" and the Band's classic first two albums, Robertson presents himself as a musician who knows he's lucky to belong to this group of musicians, and knows to fit his own gifts to theirs. "I began singing the chorus to 'The Weight' over and over to the guys, trying to convey the staggered vocal idea I had. 'Levon, you go "aaand," then Rick, "aaand," then Richard on top, "aaand."'" It was the sound of a group of people doing together what they couldn't do by themselves. But it was hard to apportion credit for it, and when attention went to Robertson the others felt violated. Robertson, for his part, felt let down as their contributions slackened because of drug use. He worked out his frustrations in songs written for them: "'The Shape I'm In' for Richard to sing, 'Stage Fright' for Rick and 'The W. S. Walcott Medicine Show' for Levon - all with undertones of madness and self-destruction." Robertson identifies the end in 1976 with the end of an era, as Jimmy Carter put Richard Nixon in the rearview mirror. But for the most part he keeps clear of big ideas and period clichés. Instead, he offers his story - his side of the story - in scene after scene. Cavorting with Edie Sedgwick at the Chelsea Hotel; previewing the album "The Band" for George Harrison; jetting to Paris with David Geffen and Joni Mitchell (and his wife, Dominique): There's so much sound and color here that the self-exculpating scenes fit right in, vivid and convincing. In the final moments of preparation for "The Last Waltz," Robertson, "drained from pushing forward with the help of drugs instead of food and sleep," meets Dominique at their hotel suite: "'Wait a second, you look so pale.' She took a brush out of her purse and said, 'Close your eyes.' She swished the brush over my cheeks and a bit around my face." A lovely conjugal moment, yes - and a rebuttal to Levon, who claimed that Robbie showed up at the Winterland with a "heavily made-up face and expensive haircut" so as to upstage the others. "Testimony" is high-spirited, hugely enjoyable and generous from start to finish. Just as the Band, which came late to '60s rock ("Music From Big Pink" was released in July 1968), learned from their peers who peaked earlier, so Robertson seems to have kept an eye on his friends Bob Dylan and Eric Clapton so as to make his autobiography a late, great pendant to theirs. ? PAUL elie is the author, most recently, of "Reinventing Bach."

Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [December 11, 2016]
Review by Booklist Review

Prolific and eclectic Robertson is best known as the lead guitarist for the Band and their legendary The Last Waltz farewell concert, preserved in Martin Scorsese's mesmerizing documentary. On that occasion's fortieth anniversary, Robertson releases a memoir many decades in the making, a thoughtful look back on a remarkable life growing up half-Jewish, half-Mohawk on the Six Nations Indian Reserve and then in Toronto. It was on the Indian reserve that he was introduced to storytelling and traditional music and sacred myths, all of which, he writes, had a powerful impact on me. He discusses his years with rockabilly artist Ronnie Hawkins and the Hawks; going electric with Bob Dylan on his 1966 world tour; the recording of The Basement Tapes at the Big Pink house in upstate New York; and, of course, the formation of the Band. Robertson also describes the various local scenes he inhabited, from the Hotel Chelsea to Woodstock to the Malibu Colony. But the story ends with the Band's end, leaving fans to savor this rich memoir and wait for the next.--Sawyers, June Copyright 2016 Booklist

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Robertson, guitarist and songwriter for the Band, highlights his career, from his early days with Ronnie Hawkins and the Hawks to the last waltz of the Band in 1976. A masterly storyteller, Robertson easily draws readers into tales of his youth and of his days with Bob Dylan. He describes the eventual formation of the Band and the group's quick climb to fame. For the first time, Robertson tells his side of the story regarding his relationship with fellow Band member Levon Helm. In their early days, the two were close friends, but in late 1969, on the way home from a show, Robertson recalls that Helm lied to him about his drug use, and Robertson recalls: "Things changed in that moment. A distance grew between Levon and me that I don't know if we were ever able to mend." Throughout, Robertson provides an intimate look at the making of the Band's farewell concert at Winterland-the Last Waltz-and describes the exhilaration, relief, and sadness of the night and the following days. Though it would have been nice if Robertson had included reflections on life since the Band and his own substantial solo career, this long-awaited and colorfully told memoir paints a masterpiece of a life in rock and roll. (Nov.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review

The lyrical musical portraits of beleaguered Southerners, lost Cajuns, or lazy hippies that Robertson wrote and The Band recorded revealed him to be a fine reporter disguised as a songwriter. It is no surprise then that he has now turned his sharp eye for detail to his own fascinating background (Jewish and Chippewa from Toronto) and The Band's musical history, covering its seminal years backing first Ronnie Hawkins and, most famously, Bob Dylan. In the years after The Band's breakup, Robertson, who added acting, movie producing, and musical scoring to his résumé, made one determined enemy-Levon Helm, the group's drummer, who, until his death, waged a PR war against Robertson that clearly had an impact. In that sense, Testament is Robertson's response to Helm's own memoir, This Wheel's on Fire. Helm claimed that Robertson stole publishing rights that should have been shared and tried to control the group. Robertson's gravelly, nicotine-stained voice disqualified him as one of The Band's vocalists. MacLeod Andrews doesn't try to imitate it, and after listening for a while, audiences will forget the difference. -VERDICT Testament is a good book, but the real passion that infuses every page of, say, Bruce Spring-steen's Born To Run is missing here. Still, any fan of that period and its music will find it enjoyable and informative. ["Revealing.... Will enrich and delight any rock fan": LJ 11/15/16 review of the Crown Archetype hc.]-Jeff Kisseloff, Portland, OR © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

One Stared out that train window into the darkness, till I near went stone blind. I patted out a rhythm on my knee and smiled to myself. Sounded like a song from the very place I was headed. I was spellbound, gazing out the train window at silhouettes of passing towns, a blur of nocturnal landscapes streaming by. Only the lights were changing. Small-town shadows stirring quietly, city neon coloring the night sky, one scene blending into another. I'd been awake for many hours, but I was too wound up to sleep, too nervous. No, too buzzed! Me and that train were headed to the holy land of rock 'n' roll, to the fountainhead, where the music I loved grew right out of the ground. This was a southbound train. Spring, 1960, sixteen years old. I was traveling from Toronto, Ontario, to Fayetteville, Arkansas, toward my chance to try out for a job playing with Ronnie Hawkins and the Hawks, the most wicked rock 'n' roll band around. Ronnie was a big rockabilly recording artist, an amazing showman with a fresh, Frankie Laine-type voice. The Hawks were a powerhouse band with perfect casting: they looked as authentic as they sounded--sideburns, slicked-back hair, Memphis cool, one part country gentlemen, three parts southern wild men. I kept staring out that passenger-car window in wonderment. I'd never been this far from home before. Every time the train whistle blew, a chill ran through me. I tried to close my eyes but couldn't sleep. This was all too new, too unimaginable, too dreamlike, because, it occurred to me, people from my background didn't hardly know how to dream. I remember the exact day it all turned around for me. I had just stepped out the side door of St. Theresa's Catholic grade school when it hit me: a vicious combination of driving wind, burning ice needles to the face, and blinding snow. You couldn't see more than a few feet in front of you. The public school lay between my school and my house, and it was plainly understood that you took your life in your hands with the kids who went there if you cut through that school yard. But in this storm I had to risk it. The sleet was pushing me to the ground every few steps. So I set myself on a direct line for enemy territory, hoping none of those tough older kids could possibly be out in this blizzard; I thought, Even Eskimos don't go out in this. But then I spotted a figure in the distance. I was already halfway across the school yard, no turning around now. As I got closer, I saw that the guy was big, and he was coming toward me. My heart was pounding from wading through the snow and being pushed back by the wind, and now from fear. He stumbled toward me, shielding his face with his scarf, like a mask. Oh man, what does he want? But when I reached him he merely stuck out his hand, holding a paper flyer, and gestured for me to take it. I blinked. Then I took the paper, stuffed it in my pocket, and kept moving. By the time I reached the side door of my house I looked like a zombie who had just crossed the Arctic Circle. My mother was there to greet me, saying, "Goodness, get in here, you must be frozen!" While hanging up my coat, she pulled the flyer out of my pocket and read it aloud. " 'Music Lessons: Accordion, Violin, Spanish and Hawaiian guitar.' Oh, are you interested in taking lessons?" I shook the snow from my hair. "Sure, anything if it means I never have to walk through a blizzard like this again." I was already drawn to music and now wondered if maybe it could help me find a way out of this frozen hellscape. "But not accordion," I added. "Lawrence Welk and all . . ." She laughed--"Okay, big dreamer"--and handed me a hot chocolate. This was a turning point. I just didn't know it yet. As the train idled at the Buffalo border crossing from Canada into the States, an immigration officer walking through the carriage asked me where I was going. It was a tricky moment: if I mentioned anything about a job, he'd turn me back. I was trembling inside, but with a straight face I told him I was going to visit my brother and his family in Arkansas. He glanced at my birth certificate, then looked me dead in the eye. I just about swallowed my gum. After a pause he said, "Have a good trip," and walked on. As the train pulled away from the station and we crossed into the U.S., a wave of sadness came over me as I remembered what I'd had to do to get the money to make my way south. Ronnie was looking to replace the guitarist or the bassist in his band, and he had told me, "Come on down here and we'll see if it works out." This was my chance to convince him I was his man, so I thought it best not to ask him for any train money; nor did I want to bother my mother, who'd given me a rough time about quitting school. In the end there was only one thing to do: I had to sell my prized 1958 Fender Stratocaster with the original classic sunburst body. She was a real beauty. I'd worked so hard to get her, saving up for months. But now I had to do whatever it took to get to Arkansas. I was on a mission but leaving that beloved Strat behind cut deep. The first time I saw Ronnie and the Hawks perform, it was a revelation. I was only fifteen and Ronnie was playing the Dixie Arena in the west end of Toronto; the band I was in, the Suedes, was opening. We'd been playing around Toronto for a few months, and opening for Ronnie Hawkins was the biggest thing we'd ever done. After that night, I would look at music in a whole different light. We had a strong lineup of players in our own group. Our drummer then was Pete "the Bear" De Remigis. He had a unique rolling-and-tumbling feel to his playing and hummed along unconsciously while he played, like a human kazoo. Pete Traynor, or "Thumper," played bass. I'd known him since I was thirteen, when we played together in the Rhythm Chords, the first band I ever hooked up with. We called him Thumper because of the way he manhandled the instrument. Pete would play and stare at you steadily, hardly ever looking at his hands. It made for a strange and powerful musical connection. Sometimes it got so intense I had to look away. Scott "Magoo" Cushnie, our piano man, was twenty-one, and he had more musical training than the rest of us, as well as a sharp sense of humor and a fascinating inventory of slang words that he never shied from busting out. Some of them he invented and some could be attributed to his devotion to the popular, off-the-wall Bob and Ray radio show. I played lead guitar and sometimes sang, but for the Dixie Arena gig we had Johnny Rhythm on vocals. Johnny was part street hustler, part show-bar rock 'n' roll impersonator, but the guy could sing like a bird. That night we played pretty good, and from the stage we could see Ronnie and his boys checking us out, which made us all reach a little higher. But when the Hawk took the stage the whole atmosphere changed. The audience, which had been lingering around chatting, now crowded the front of the stage. Suddenly you could taste something raw and authentic in the air. The band was all dressed in black and red outfits. When they exploded into their first song, "Wild Little Willie," the Hawk prowled the stage like a caged animal. He soared over Will "Pop" Jones's piano, growling a primitive war cry and miming a cranking motion behind Will's back like an organ-grinder winding up his monkey. Will was oblivious--he was living inside the music, chewing gum to the rhythm, sweat flying, eyes crossed, head thrown back, hands pumping those ivories. Jimmy Ray "Luke" Paulman's Gretsch "Country Gentleman" guitar with its flat-wound strings poured on the rhythm. When Luke fired into a solo the Hawk had a chance to spin, flip, camel walk--the original version of the moonwalk--then tumble and land at Luke's feet. Toward the end of the solo, Ronnie would come back in singing like he was driving a mule train, and when he did the Hawks would settle into a slippery, swift locomotion behind his vocal. Lefty Evans on bass was the only thing that kept the band grounded, or they might have become airborne and floated away. It was the most violent, dynamic, primitive rock 'n' roll I had ever witnessed, and it was addictive. In the center of it all was a young beam of light on drums. Teeth gleaming, laughing, bleached hair glowing, whole body shaking, drumsticks twirling, pushing those red sparkle drums with a hawk painted on the bass drum like a white tornado. It was the first time I saw Levon Helm, and I'd never seen anything like it. After the show I hung out while the Hawks packed up their guitars and drums, leaning in just to hear those southern accents, so rare up in Canada. I desperately wanted some of this mojo to rub off on me. They were playing at the club Le Coq d'Or in Toronto for a couple more weeks, and I hung around them as much as I could without getting in the way, trying to make myself useful. Their road manager, Colin "Boney" McQueen, let me help out, doing stuff he didn't want to do, but I didn't care: this was biblical and I was fast becoming an apostle of the church of rockabilly. One afternoon at the Warwick Hotel, where musicians, strippers, and small-time con men stayed in downtown Toronto, I overheard Ronnie say, "Boys, I need some new songs. We're going in the studio next month." A bell went off in my head. I had written some tunes for the little bands I'd been in, but this could be a breakthrough. I ran home, grabbed my guitar, went to my room, and stayed up all night trying to write something that Ronnie could wrap his voice around--hopefully something reminiscent of Gene Vincent's "Woman Love." By morning I had finished two songs. That day, I taught them to Johnny Rhythm, who could sing them in a style similar to Ron's, and soon we were playing them for the Hawk himself. He listened to both songs with a little smirk on his face, but when we finished he stood up and said, "Play those again." Damned if they didn't sound better the second time around. Ron pointed a finger at me and declared, "I'm going to record both of them songs." I tried not to get too excited in front of him, but inside I was overflowing. "Not bad for a fifteen-year-old, right?" I mumbled out of nervous joy. Ron just pointed his finger again and said, "I'll be keeping an eye on you, boy. You might have some talent." When it came to finding good material this incredibly funny showman became stone serious, and it was fascinating to see him turn on a dime. When Ronnie returned to Toronto a few months later, he brought his new album, Mr. Dynamo, and presented me with a sealed copy. "Both your songs are on here, turned out pretty good." I tore open the LP and looked at the record label, thrilled to see their titles there--"Someone Like You" and "Hey Boba Lu." But when I looked for my name, I saw that the songwriting credit read, "Robertson, Magil." Who was this "Magil" guy? What was this all about? Ronnie laid it out for me: "Magil" was an alias used by a man named Morris Levy: the power behind Roulette Records, nightclub owner, business partner to the legendary rock 'n' roll disc jockey Alan Freed, and mobster known for having a recording artist hung by the ankles out the window of his office building. "See that Cadillac convertible parked down there?" he'd say. "I can let go and drop you down into that car . . . or you can walk down there with the keys and drive away. All you have to do is sign the papers." When you recorded for Roulette, Morris Levy usually got a piece of the songwriting. "Magil" was his credit. I started to protest but Ron said, "Son, in this business there are certain things you don't even question. There are some ol' boys in New York City you don't want to mess with." I had heard such stories of the ruthless rock 'n' roll music business floating around, but I still couldn't help feeling like "The Fool" from the Sanford Clark song for not standing my ground. A few days later, Ronnie came to me with an idea, one that would take me to New York City. If I could write songs for him, he said, maybe I also had an ear for other songs that would be good for him to record. Like many artists at that time, he didn't write much of his own music and was in constant search of new material. So with Levon doing most of the driving--daytime, nighttime, it didn't matter to Levon--we set off to New York. A friend of Ron's, Dallas Harms, who had written a couple of popular songs, came along. I felt as if I were part of an official song-search mission. Crossing the bridge into Manhattan gave me chill bumps. I had never seen so many lights, so many movie theaters, so much neon, so many ladies of the night. I couldn't take it all in quick enough. We stayed at the Times Square Hotel on 42nd Street, and the next day Ronnie, with me in tow, hailed a cab. "Is Levon coming?" I asked. "Nah, it's not his thing," Ronnie said. "He'll play it better than anybody, but he ain't a song person, or he wouldn't still be singing 'Short Fat Fanny' every night." Ron chuckled and slapped my knee as the taxi pulled away. "Son, that's what I brought you for. We gotta find me some good material." We headed for the Brill Building. With its high entranceway and gold doors, 1619 Broadway was like a temple for tunesmiths. It was the Tin Pan Alley of its day, just north of Times Square, the eleven-story heart of the music industry, a warren of small and large production offices humming with songwriters, musicians, music publishers, and producers. Inside, a guy from the record company took us around to the different music rooms making introductions: Doc Pomus and Mort Shuman, Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, Otis Blackwell, and, oh yes, the outrageous singer-songwriter Titus Turner, who had just had his own hit on the King label with "Return of Stagolee." They were all tickled by Ron's stories and cutups. "Boys, I'll tell ya," he crowed, "there ain't no difference between me and Elvis Presley except maybe looks and talent!" Excerpted from Testimony by Robbie Robertson All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.