Greg Mitchell has authored more than a dozen books (see most of them here) and directed four recent PBS films. Subscribing to this newsletter is still FREE—so if you want to help fund, maybe purchase one of my books, see links at very bottom of today’s newsletter, thanks.
John Oliver last night on police chases…
From transcript of Trump’s interview, below, with the “new” 60 Minutes last night, though this small part did not air. Of course, he was only weakly challenged by Norah O’Donnell throughout, showing why she is rumored to be Bari “Bad” Weiss’s choice for next evening news anchor.
There’s a new Robbie Robertson memoir coming, as Rolling Stone reports.
Six months later, Robertson unexpectedly died, but the book he was working on, Insomnia, is being readied for publication on Nov. 11. As promised, the memoir focuses on the years 1977 to 1980, when Robertson became close pals and housemates with director Martin Scorsese, more entrenched in the Hollywood community and less with his former mates in the Band. The book chronicles a wild ride of drugs, hookups, and many movie viewing sessions, often over pasta or fine food. Here are some things we learned along the way, including a few scores Robertson apparently wanted to settle.
His previous, mainly on Dylan and The Band and Robbie’s youth, sold very well. The new one looks more at his post-Band and wild Hollywood years, hanging with Marty and DeNiro and Jack and various starlets. So we learn:
In 1978, Scorsese was rushed to a hospital after his already ravaged body gave out. “Maybe the rock & roll lifestyle I had brought into Marty’s life was to blame for his plight,” Robertson writes, adding that the experience helped him straighten up. “It finally got through to me: I had to stop.”
Fans of The Band will be curious to see if he fires back at the late Levon Helm’s criticism of him. Since it’s paywalled, a couple excerpts BTW, I agree with Levon at least on the odd soundstage addition to “The Last Waltz” and embarrassing interviews with Richard Manuel.
When the movie was being wrapped up, Robertson claims Helm wasn’t keen on shooting the additional soundstage footage that featured the Staple Singers and Emmylou Harris, and would have preferred to keep the extra cash for themselves. “My God, I thought, he doesn’t get this at all,” Robertson writes. He also claims Helm was unhappy with the interview footage with Richard Manuel, who was pretty much in the bag, but that everyone else was fine with it. As Robertson writes early in the book, “I was tired of Levon, who was becoming more and more difficult to deal with.”
“I knew Levon was an extraordinary musician, but he was limited in his vision and ambitions, happy to go round and round playing music in the same old circuit.”
Continuing my Tweedy-dee explorations, I noted that on Margaret Glaspy’s new album of cover songs she records, with Norah Jones, a version of one of the most beautiful songs of our time, Wilco’s old and oft-covered “Jesus etc.” It’s piano-based and not quite to my liking but here is Norah doing it herself a few years back:
And Jeffy doing it himself for Stephen Colbert:
From Tunes to Toons
The Andrew formerly known as Prince:
Photo Finish
Continuing my new feature, let me know what you think, today: “I Lift My Camera Before the Golden Gate.”
Robertson’s return of fire here doesn’t address Helm’s main point that Robertson broke up the Band when none of them wanted to quit by essentially forcing the Last Waltz on them all (with acts like Neil Diamond no less, which had nothing to do with the Band and everything to do with Robertson), then humiliating them in front of the camera by portraying himself as the Band’s de facto leader, which was contrary to the whole spirit of their collaboration, and then telling a false story about how all of them were spent after “16 years on the road” (not to mention Robertson’s fake singing). Helm said that Ronnie Hawkins guffawed at this.
I wish the other band members had pointed this out earlier instead of going along with the show (much as I liked the Last Waltz), and that Robertson was more honest about his own motivation earlier to go in a different direction. Nothing wrong with that, of course, but could you do your mates a solid by being a little more frank? I know that’s not necessarily easy, and that Helm’s ego was big as well.
I guess Robertson’s aims might have been apparent, and one could put the conflict that resulted down to a “failure to communicate”, but I still agree with Helm that it wasn’t fair to the rest of the boys and was ego driven and self-serving. When I think about it from time to time, it leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
CBS has bowed down to ‘Don’
donnie