Martin Scorsese – Five Things I Saw & Heard This Week

Thursday, August 22rd | Six Robbie Robertson Songs & Performances for the ages

{ONE} RONNIE HAWKINS, THE LAST WALTZ | “COME ON ROBBIE, LET’S TAKE A LITTLE WALK…”
Robbie still has to count Ronnie in … but the sound of his newly-bronzed Stratocaster summons up the rowdy rockabilly that Ronnie Hawkins traded in. “I didn’t know whether it would be a bad idea, but I decided to have the Stratocaster bronzed. It was a bit tricky, you know, finding somebody to do that. One of the road manager guys said, There’s a place where they bronze baby shoes. He did some research, took it, brought it back, and it was bronze. I thought, Wow — it does look beautiful. They put it all back together again. I played it, and it sounded unlike any guitar I had ever played. Then, when I stood up and put on the strap, I realised it weighed more.

I tried it out in the rehearsals for the Last Waltz and it started to feel right to me, and I was quite drawn to the tonality of it. There was a little bit more… it was just a sharper tone, with more metal involved. It grabbed right onto the notes, making them sting, in a way, and have a nice sustain to it as well…” Well, there’s a whole life on the rockabilly road in Ronnie’s performance, topped with his glorious scream, and Robbie becomes eighteen again, the six-days-on-the road, “blowing down the backroads headin’ south” boy, taking lessons from Fred Carter Jr. and Roy Buchanan and trying to be the loudest, flashiest guitar player on the circuit.

{TWO} BOB DYLAN’S HOTEL ROOM, GLASGOW | “I CAN’T LEAVE HER BEHIND…”
Robbie Robertson jamming with Bob Dylan at the Station Hotel, Glasgow, on a day off between concerts, 18th May 1966. One of Dylan’s song sketches from a time when he’d try out melodies, often having an almost medieval feel, with dummy or half-formed words (most famously on “I’m Not There” on the Basement recordings the next year). How good would this have sounded on Blonde On Blonde?

“I’m not getting the bridge,” says Robbie, as he tries to read Bob’s mind… “That’s it, that’s it”, says Bob. Towards the end, as the song coalesces, hear how Robertson became one of the great structural guitarists of the pop age, learning how to play behind singers, how to structure the textures, the hills and valleys of songs, and when to drop in sweet grace notes, or play a fill that knits two parts together.

{THREE} OLD, OLD WOODSTOCK | “KING HARVEST (HAS SURELY COME)”
Everyone’s seen this performance, shot in what is now John and Jan Cuneo’s house, but was Robbie’s studio back then. Maybe no songwriter outside of Fleetwood Mac has written so many songs directed at their bandmates as Robbie Robertson has — “Stage Fright”, “Where Do We Go From Here?” Forbidden Fruit,” but here, as the second album is finished and all is well in the Band world, this film shows their characters and connection beautifully.

Barney Hoskyns, in his excellent book on The Band, Across The Great Divide, wrote: “Corn in the fields / Listen to the rice when the wind blows ‘cross the water / King Harvest has surely come…” It was the first of three marvellous images that Levon intoned as prefaces to Richard’s verses — just part of the song’s intricate structure, which involved several time changes and suspensions. “The chord progression was a little bit complex”, says Robbie. ‘There’s a sifty feeling we were trying to get, which was subtle and bold at the same time.’ Just as ‘sifty’ were the sounds the band attained for each instrument. With John Simon playing an electric piano through the same black box Robbie had used on “Tears Of Rage,” Garth’s Lowrey shimmered away in the background, and Robbie made tiny Telecaster incisions off to one side. “This was the new way of dealing with the guitar,” Robbie says. “Leaving out a lot of stuff and just waiting till the last second and then playing the thing in just the nick of time. It was an approach to playing where it’s so delicate, the opposite of the “in your face” playing that I used to do.” After the final verse, Robbie played a solo so intense it was frightening. “It’s like you have to hold your breath while playing these kinds of solos,” he says. “You can’t breathe, or you’ll throw yourself off.”

“Tempo sounds slow, John”, Levon drawls to their producer, John Simon, at the end. Sounds perfect to me.

{FOUR} I SAW IT AT THE MOVIES | “WONDERFUL REMARK”
A Van Morrison song and performance from the soundtrack of Scorsese’s The King of Comedy, produced by Robertson.

Robbie’s tremolo’d guitar comes in halfway through the song, playing along with Richard Tee’s glorious piano and then re-appears shuddering, swooping and stinging, taking out the song as Van moans, “I sighed a million sighs / I told a million lies / to myself / To myself / Baby, to myself…” It’s some of the most “Robbie” playing on record.

{FIVE} DOWN SOUTH IN NEW ORLEANS | “SECRETS OF STORYVILLE”

“Tipitina’s at 1:00 a.m. A sound so loud it seemed to suck the air out of your lungs. George Porter Jr., formerly of the Meters, also a sideman on Robbie Robertson’s album Storyville, was playing up there beneath a giant picture of Professor Longhair, playing funky stuff with four horns under smoke that swirled in cones of colored light. Nervous people, wall to wall, danced to the nervous licks from a bottleneck guitar. A man in a donkey mask danced for a moment in an orange light and then was swallowed by the primordial, protoplasmic crowd. A miasma of smoke and sweat rose to the faint lights. A soprano saxophone wailed old Coltrane, set to rhythm & blues.

We were trying to hide in the shadows beside the stage “to avoid any foolish thing that might happen,” as Robbie had put it. But the band began what Robbie called “this ferocious funk thing,” and then Porter went up to the microphone and looked over in our direction, saying with a sly smile: “Robbie? You wanna get some of this?” It was such a cool way of putting it. It was practically irresistible on its own. But then it was Nick Wechsler, Robbie’s manager, who did it. He had gotten up behind Robbie, and he was pushing him like a tugboat, pushing, pushing through the crowd, and there was nowhere else to go. Robbie later told me: “The appeal of it was that it was just this unknown ferocious funk that evolved. When I went up there, I didn’t know what they were playing.”

When Robbie pushed past Paula and me to get to the stage, we didn’t know what he was doing. Robbie rarely sat in, but there he was, climbing the stage, and the guitar player handed him the instrument as the crowd erupted with sustained Indian cries. It was as if a dam had burst, and sound flowed out, transforming itself into “Iko Iko,” the national anthem of New Orleans funk. Paula and I were absorbed into the crowd, and then we were dancing, Dominique was dancing, and the notes from Robbie’s guitar were unfurling like bolts of coloured fabric tossed into the wind.” — From a great Laurence Gonzales article, “Secrets of Storyville”, Men’s Journal, 1993

Here’s “Go Back To Your Woods”, a song from the album co-written with Bruce Hornsby — hear Robbie backed by the Meters, with George Porter on bass and some incantations from a couple of Parade Chiefs. There are some brilliant things on Storyville — “Soap Box Preacher”, ”Night Parade”, and ”Breakin’ the Rules” (with its great opening line, “I tried to reach you, on Valentines Day” and Blue Nile’s Paul Buchanan on vocals).

{SIX} RECITING LOU REED | “SOMEWHERE (DIRTY BLVD.)”
Lang Lang’s extraordinary merging of Bernstein and Sondheim’s “Somewhere” and Lou Reed’s “Dirty Blvd.” If you remember “Somewhere Down the Crazy River,” then it makes perfect sense. It’s amazing, ten and a half minutes of pianistics, bombastic percussion, “Somewhere” sung by Lisa Fischer, and “Dirty Blvd” spoken by Robertson. One of America’s iconic songs of hope balanced by one of Lou’s greatest songs about lives lived in poverty and trauma.

Wednesday, June 12th

{ONE} A FEW THINGS ABOUT MARTIN SCORSESE’S NETFLIX FILM, “ROLLING THUNDER REVUE: A BOB DYLAN STORY”
“It was more fun than the law allows, by a long shot. There were genius writers everywhere. It was a bus full of musicians and singers and painters hurtling through the night fueled by White Russians and other things, making a movie, writing songs and playing – on those evenings when we got the mixture right – some of the most incendiary, intense and inspired rock’ n’ roll, before or since. For evidence, please see the version of “Isis.” Check out Dylan’s reading of, “If you want me to, yes.” That was about it for me. That “yes” encapsulated all of it. The joy, the shock, the anger, the lust, the mirth, the bewilderment, the almost derangement of the whole ride.”
– T-Bone Burnett, one of the Revue guitarists

Watch it, it’s a hoot – brilliant and funny, and you can believe what you want to. Think back to Dylan’s playful press conferences – even now he has the ability to wrong-foot or con the audience, he’s just doing it here with Scorsese’s help. It makes no difference if the Sharon Stone bit is invented, or the Argentinian filmmaker doesn’t really exist. If you remember Robert Altman and Garry Trudeau’s political mockumentary, Tanner ’88, then the politician interviewed about Dylan’s closeness to President Jimmy Carter won’t be a surprise. It’s safe to say that no conventional film studio would have gone for this, but that’s what Netflix brings to the table. So here are a few great moments from Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story.

1 “Isis”. Scarlet Rivera’s limo driver says that he’d never really been to a rock show, before noting that the relationship between those on the stage and those in the audience was like “one battery charging another”, a neat way of conveying the excitement felt by the audience at being in such intimate spaces seeming to spur on the performers to reach some kind of ecstasy. Nowhere is this better expressed than in the mighty performance of “Isis” captured here, transformed from a rather plain, loping, piano-driven tune to an excessive, expressive romp. With no guitar (a Patti Smith inspired move) Dylan in white-face makeup gives it the full David Bowie (while, amusingly, Mick Ronson struts and solos behind him).

2 Allen Ginsberg. Ginsberg went from being part of the first shows to being bumped off-stage as the running time needed to be cut, by a lot. He continues on tour, hilariously reading Kaddish to a group of mahjong-playing women, who just happened to be in the same hotel as the Revue (they’re then treated to Dylan and band romping through “Simple Twist of Fate” in an almost “Pub Singer” style). What’s great about Ginsberg is that when the camera alights on him, he sums up what’s happening and what it may mean, in gorgeous poetic sentences.

3 “Like stations in some relay…” Among the extraordinary Bob performances nestles something equally stunning. We’re at Gordon Lightfoot’s house in Toronto, walking up darkened stairs before being ushered into a living room. Seated with guitars are Roger McGuinn, Dylan and Joni Mitchell. Joni proceeds to teach them the chords sequence that she wants them to play. When she’s satisfied that they’re not going to fuck it up, she starts… “No regrets, Coyote / We just come from such different sets of circumstances / I’m up all night in the studios / And you’re up early on your ranch…”

She delivers it drop-dead perfectly. She’s just written it about Sam Shepherd, who’s along for the ride to write a film that’s being shot as the tour winds its way up the Northeast coast of America. “I’m up all night in the studios / And you’re up early on your ranch / You’ll be brushing out a brood mare’s tail / While the sun is ascending / And I’ll just be getting home with my reel to reel…” He was invited to join up, so he dropped what he was doing (setting up a horse ranch in California, since you ask) and caught a train (won’t fly, not since “Mexico, 1963”) to New York. If you like the film, his Rolling Thunder Logbook is a great companion piece.

4 Turning 180º from the big-boned performances and the blustery stadiums of Tour ’74, where even the acoustic performances are bellowed, here, in the gipsy caravan of RTR, “Mister Tambourine Man” is given a beautiful reading, every line caressed and shaped and caught in amazing close-up by David Myers’ lens.

5 The whipcrack of Howie Wyeth’s snare in “The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll”. Wyeth and bassist Rob Stoner (the MD of the whole shebang) are the MVPs of the Revue, providing a brilliant rhythmic and melodic platform for everyone to swan-dive off. Stoner does outrageous melodic walks up and down the neck while never missing an accent or a root note to anchor everything again. Wyeth, a student of orchestral percussion, plays the songs, commenting on the lyrics as he goes. In Sam Shepherd’s words, “Wyeth’s jackhammer drums are splitting the four-four time into smithereens. He has a right hand that’s not to be believed. It comes down on the accent and then plays half a dozen little cluster strokes in between striking two or three cymbals for added color. A drummer like this usually goes totally unnoticed, since he lacks the obvious flash of the more athletic types – Howie sits there like he’s driving a ’58 Impala, cruising down the highway.” Joni Mitchell intended to visit for one show, but stayed for the remaining 15, partly because, she said, “Howie Wyeth’s soul is so beautiful.”

The end titles list every gig, by years, that Dylan has played since the Revue’s tours. It’s astonishing…

{TWO} EAZY DOES IT
It seems that the Eazy-E bench in Newhaven [for the earlier story go here] is not an unalloyed hit. But it has produced a classic local paper story. The Argus reports.

One angry resident said he was “truly shocked and outraged” by the decision to allow the bench. William Bartoli told the council: “You are all responsible for polluting our cherished town. I would have applauded Guy Stevens’ interest, and hard work in raising the funds, until I discovered it was a shrine to a drug-dealing rapper whose many song titles included ‘F*** the Police’.” He raged: “Would I get permission to have a memorial bench for Jimmy Savile? I think not.”

In response, Councillor Pinky McLean said that the bench was “a project of passion from a local taxpayer. Although we may not agree with lyrics that this American man wrote, there are many music legends who have not lived a truly wholesome life and recorded songs and lyrics that offend. But they are just humans. Eric ‘Eazy-E’ Wright was too. He was just a man who has been remembered on a bench and, while not everyone’s cup of tea, made many, many people happy.”

Mr Stevens, who campaigned for the bench, said: “I’d encourage everyone to get a bench of a dead rapper in their town.” Unveiling the bench, Town Mayor Amy said: “I would like to see a John Lennon bench – that was more my era. After looking up Eazy -E on the internet, I am now an expert on gangster rap. His LP Straight Outta Compton was rated as one of the best ever made, and for me, that’s fascinating, because I didn’t have a clue who he was.”

{THREE} LEE KRASNER
Thanks to Caroline and Bill, we went to the opening of Lee Krasner: Living Colour. “I was a woman, Jewish, a widow, a damn good painter, thank you, and a little too independent.” It’s a great show, especially the early-to-mid work that the brutalist Barbican space really suits. When MoMa had an exhibition of the paintings of her husband, Jackson Pollock in 1998, they released a CD of music drawn from the Jazz 78s found in his studio. As it’s 2019, The Barbican has made a Spotify playlist for Lee, and it’s very cool.

{FOUR} THERE’S A LOT OF TALENT OUT THERE…

The ingenuity of folk knows no bounds – here’s four people with a strange band name (Walk off the Earth), some loose change, drinking glasses and giant handbells, playing my new favourite song, Lil Nas’ “Old Town Road.”

{FIVE} B.B. KING – LIFE OF RILEY
A sombre, serious portrait that ends up being less celebratory than it could be, and more melancholy. It’s on Netflix now, and beautifully directed by Jon Brewer, but I felt it needed less of the talking heads and a few more of B.B.’s milestone performances. One nugget, though, was an interesting story about his aversion to playing acoustic guitars. Eric Clapton had asked B.B. to make an album with him (2000’s Riding With the King)…

Eric Clapton: I thought the best thing to do – we’ll go into the room with a couple of guitars and see what comes out…
B.B. King: I said, “Whatever you think is good we’ll try it”, and we did, and he was right, except trying to make me play acoustic – I didn’t like that… [laughs] I had been cut all to pieces by a guy called Alexis Korner. Alexis Korner said, “B, I got two Martin guitars, acoustic guitars and I got an idea for something called “Alexis Boogie”, so let’s try it…” Boy, when we started recording, he just cut me to pieces. I said, I’ll never play another [acoustic] as long as you’re alive [laugh] and I didn’t! I promised I wouldn’t do it again, but now Alexis is dead I’ll try it. And Eric did the same thing, cut me to pieces!