{"id":7915,"date":"2011-07-05T12:31:05","date_gmt":"2011-07-05T16:31:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/?p=7915"},"modified":"2011-07-05T12:53:54","modified_gmt":"2011-07-05T16:53:54","slug":"an-open-letter-to-robbie-robertson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/an-open-letter-to-robbie-robertson\/","title":{"rendered":"An Open Letter to Robbie Robertson"},"content":{"rendered":"<iframe class='youtube-player youtuber' type='text\/html' width='425' height='355' src='http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/wlspTemS7kI?rel=0&amp;fs=1&amp;ap=%252526fmt%253D18' webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen frameborder='0'><\/iframe><p><em>Dear Robbie,<\/em><\/p>\n<p>First of all, Happy Birthday! I was planning to write you today regardless, but when I logged onto my e-mail this morning there was a message from <a href=\"http:\/\/www.wolfgangsvault.com\/the-band\/memorabilia\/?ra=0\" target=\"_blank\">Wolfgang&#8217;s Vault<\/a> saluting you on this, your 68th birthday. I wish I knew where to send you a card, but this open letter I&#8217;m posting here on Rock Town Hall will have to do.<\/p>\n<p>As old friends and regulars to the Halls of Rock know, I&#8217;ve been fascinated by <strong>The Band <\/strong>since childhood, when my\u00a0relatively hippie uncle gave me your second, self-titled lp and let me listen to your band&#8217;s other albums on the 8-track player in his bedroom. He would regale me with tales of having seen you guys\u00a0in concert many times over, ranking your musicianship among that of his other favorite artists: James Brown, Traffic, and Joe Cocker&#8217;s Leon Russell\u2013led band. My uncle&#8217;s dark, exotically scented room was a wizard&#8217;s den of learning and exploration. Your albums were sacred relics.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;d spend so many years gazing at the photos in the gatefold sleeve of that self-titled album that I felt I knew my way around what I\u2019d learn years later was Sammy Davis Jr.\u2019s pool house. And your facial hair and clothes, in sepia tone no less! I couldn&#8217;t wait to grow up and\u00a0sprout whiskers. What was cool, too, through the lense of my middle-class, Italian-American family, was that you sported all that cool facial hair while not overstepping the bounds of stylishly long hair. Most of you were capable of cleaning up and looking stylishly hip, unlike the incorrigible freaks of the Jefferson Airplane, for instance.<\/p>\n<p>Most importantly, of course, was the music. The fact that you fit the Goatee Rock standards of an Italian-American household in the late-&#8217;60s was convenient, but the wavy hair nipping at your oversized shirt collars wouldn&#8217;t have meant a thing if your music didn&#8217;t have that swing. As I gazed as the credits for your second album one thing that was unavoidable was how much you, Robbie, contributed. You&#8217;re listed as playing just about every instrument under the sun! Your bandmates play multiple instruments, but only your credits require a paragraph&#8217;s worth of space! You were the man, Robbie. I learned this as a boy, before I caught the sports bug, and the lesson was driven home when I rediscovered your music through <em>The Last Waltz<\/em>, just at the moment when my dreams of a professional baseball career were evaporating.<\/p>\n<p>Damn, you cleaned up as well as would be expected for that film! Levon and Rick looked good, too, but there was no doubt who was the <em>Band<\/em>leader. Levon was the team MVP, but you still wore the <em>C<\/em>. After the second viewing of <em>The Last Waltz<\/em> when it came out in the theaters I started saving money for a Fender Strat. I couldn&#8217;t find a gold one, like what you played in the movie, but a year later I&#8217;d saved enough money to buy a blonde Strat with a black pickguard. It would have to do. My friends and I were starting a band, and I began writing songs with an eye toward claiming the captaincy. With every half-assed song I wrote I had one eye on the <em>C<\/em>. I was too lazy to properly learn how to play guitar let alone learn multiple instruments, but that didn&#8217;t stop me from trying to pick up as many credits as possible. Backing vocals and percussion? Check. Slide guitar? Got it! Overdubbed\u00a0second bass part coming out of a solo? I&#8217;m ready, if you need me!\u00a0Hold a note on the organ through a few measures? I&#8217;ve got a forefinger!<\/p>\n<p>I was all over your career following <em>The Last Waltz<\/em>, Robbie. Shoot, I paid to see your directorial\/acting debut in <em>Carny<\/em>. I remember it not being bad, despite not being able to remember a thing about the movie. I think I spent the entire film imagining you and my favorite director, <strong>Martin Scorsese<\/strong>, being connected at the hip in future years for a run of cinematic masterpieces that would incorporate not only your music but appearances by <strong>The Clash<\/strong>. Didn&#8217;t they make a cameo in some film you and Marty worked on? I remember reading about their coming appearance and expecting a lot more. <em>That&#8217;s OK<\/em>, I told myself, <em>there&#8217;s more to come from this meeting of the minds!<\/em><\/p>\n<p><!--more-->Years passed, The Clash came and went, while you continued to lay low. Once night in the mid-1980s I had nightmare of meeting your burned-out Band-mates backstage, in a sunken dressing room. Rick and Richard looked like hell; Richard was literally hooked up to an IV. Levon wasn&#8217;t talking. I was afraid of Garth from his interview scenes in <em>The Last Waltz<\/em>. All that stuff you were saying in the movie about Jimi, Janis, and Jim and The Road rang true. Once I made my mark with my band, I thought to myself in the middle of this dream, I was going ease us off The Road and just create, like, Art. Maybe I could then work my way\u00a0into that Scorcese scene you and Strummer would have had up and running.<\/p>\n<p>Shortly after this dream Richard Manuel would hang himself and you would be coming out with your first solo album! <a href=\"http:\/\/theband.hiof.no\/articles\/rr_musician_sep_87.html\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>Bill Flanagan<\/strong>, one of my favorite writers from <em>Musician<\/em> magazine\u00a0was thrilled<\/a>, but I was a leery of you hanging around with <strong>U2<\/strong> and <strong>Peter Gabriel<\/strong>. What did those guys have to do with the legacy of The Band? Did they even own the s\/t Band album or sit through a half dozen screenings of <em>The Last Waltz<\/em>? I&#8217;d bet my life a 16-year-old The Edge never shelled out for a copy of <em>Moondog Matinee<\/em> and experienced the disappointment I felt at that age with a new copy of that turd. I thought we had an agreement, Robbie. I thought you were going to watch out of me, or at least include me through collaborations with my new generation of rock heroes. I listened to that first solo album a couple of times and it was bad, man. Why did you subject yourself to <strong>Daniel Lanois<\/strong> and all his mystical vibe nonsense? That stuff may have served the two-chord wonders of U2 well, but you&#8217;ve been credited with having played a paragraph&#8217;s worth of instruments and written perhaps rock&#8217;s greatest story song ever, &#8220;The Night They Drove\u00a0Old Dixie Down.&#8221; You don&#8217;t need Lanois, Gabriel, Bono, and all that shimmering reverb to bring out a vibe, man. You were the captain, man. I know I&#8217;m saying this stuff to you almost 25 years too late, but based on what I&#8217;ve heard from your latest album, <em>How to Become Invisible<\/em>, or whatever it&#8217;s called, the general message stands.<\/p>\n<p>I couldn&#8217;t bear the occasional solo albums that would follow, Robbie. For that paragraph&#8217;s worth of credits on the second Band album, perhaps no unfulfilled role on those recordings was more valuable than that of lead vocalist. I sometimes lift the needle on &#8220;Unfaithful Servant,&#8221; but I would have had to scratch an entire track off the album had you thought it necessary to\u00a0add <em>lead vocals<\/em> to your list of contributions.<\/p><iframe class='youtube-player youtuber' type='text\/html' width='425' height='355' src='http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/6V99TJhtB44?rel=0&amp;fs=1&amp;ap=%252526fmt%253D18' webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen frameborder='0'><\/iframe><p>Despite these profound disappointments I have had\u00a0no interest in reading Levon&#8217;s grumbling. He was a miserable bastard in that dream I had. You will always be the Captain of The Band in my heart, Robbie. As for the new album and any possible plans to record further records in the future, can we put this shit behind us once and for all? Can the whole Renaissance Man\/Captain Slick routine be put to bed? You piled up a paragraph&#8217;s worth of credits on one of the greatest albums of all time. You got to play a gold guitar and wear a veltet jacket and red silk scarf on your brilliantly conceived and executed camera-hogging farewell performance with your teenage mates. <strong>Jann Wenner<\/strong> and the rock &#8216;n roll media will foot the bill of your hotel stays and meals around the world for eternity so long you spend a few minutes chatting them up and casually waving a dyed-brown forelock back in place. You can make an appearance at the Rock &#8216;n Roll Hall of Fame ceremony whenever you&#8217;d like; they&#8217;ll make sure Levon&#8217;s nowhere near the joint. Just stop, already, with any efforts at presenting yourself as a viable musician. Maybe you can do something respectable like <strong>John Sebastian<\/strong> and make Time-Life informercials.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ll always love you, my Captain, but no rock &#8216;n roll love affair has\u00a0left me feeling more shame and remorse than I do whenever you re-emerge to promote some quasi-mystical, star-studded solo album.<\/p>\n<address>A paragraph&#8217;s worth of admiration,<\/address>\n<address>Mr. Moderator<\/address>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Dear Robbie, First of all, Happy Birthday! I was planning to write you today regardless, but when I logged onto my e-mail this morning there was a message from Wolfgang&#8217;s Vault saluting you on this, your 68th birthday. I wish I knew where to send you a card, but this open letter I&#8217;m posting here <a href='https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/an-open-letter-to-robbie-robertson\/' class='excerpt-more'>[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[342],"tags":[100],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7915"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7915"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7915\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7915"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7915"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7915"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}