FILTER BOOKS
Good fellas?
Two new bachelors do drugs, watch movies and, it turns out, make history.
By Grayson Haver Currin.
Insomnia ★★★★
Robbie Robertson
Band of brothers: Robbie Robertson and Martin Scorsese make a real connection, 1978.
Richard E. Aaron/Redferns/Getty
CROWN/PENGUIN RANDOM HOUSE. £20
ROBBIE ROBERTSON did not know how to tell his friend he was now single. It was February 1977, and Robertson had famously played The Band’s farewell performance at the Winterland Ballroom only three months earlier. He and said friend, Martin Scorsese, were just diving into the next stages of turning the footage into The Last Waltz. Robertson’s life seemed to be falling apart – the group that had been his vehicle of song was crumbling, and his wife, Dominique, had told him to get out. He was living in The Band’s studio playhouse, the Shangri-La, possibly haunted by ghosts and certainly distracted by other acts stopping by to work or score. He worried, too, he was losing his mind. “Even though our friendship involved a real connection that felt strong,”
Robertson remembers of his hesitation, “I knew Marty came from a certain place and culture where you didn’t reveal personal things.”
Insomnia is Robertson’s brief but detail-rich account of the 20 months the Italian-American director and Canadian craftsman of American roots-rock were housemates and, in Robertson’s parlance, became brothers. Robertson died in August 2023, and this follow-up to his sprawling 2016 memoir, Testimony, reads less like a final chapter and more like a piece of a story he assumed was still in progress. After Robertson swallowed his pride and told Scorsese of his woes, the filmmaker admitted his own wife, Julia Cameron, had bailed. He invited Robertson to stay. “We can get work done on the movie, check out some music, watch some films, and maybe have a few laughs,” Scorsese told him.