By ROBBIE ROBERTSON (Crown; 2025)
It’s a fact that I like my rock ‘n’ roll memoirs packed with drug taking, illicit sex, vomit and death. INSOMNIA, a posthumously published recounting by The Band’s late guitarist Robbie Robertson (1943-2023), contains a couple of those elements, but they’re presented in a subdued manner, under the blanket designation “rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle.” The book’s primary interest for me is the fact that its subject is Robertson’s late 1970s friendship with film director extraordinaire Martin Scorsese.
Martin Scorcese, Robbie Robertson
This “whacked out odd couple” were finishing up THE LAST WALTZ (1978), the renowned documentary about The Band’s final concert, when Robertson, in the midst of a traumatic break-up, elected to move into Scorsese’s Mulholland Drive home. What followed was a great deal of film watching and encounters with movie folk ranging from Francis Ford Coppola (who insisted on hiring a personal chef for Robertson and Scorsese) to Isabella Rossellini (who became Scorsese’s main squeeze for a time).
THE LAST WALTZ (1978) Trailer
Overlaying it all was that unfortunate rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle, which took a serious toll on the health of the asthmatic Scorsese, who wound up hospitalized and told he’d have to radically change his lifestyle. He followed the doctor’s orders, resulting in the making of RAGING BULL and Robertson moving out of his house.
Robertson writes extensively of Scorsese’s kind-hearted but prickly and obsessive nature (he takes his movie watching very seriously), and of interactions with Scorsese confidantes like Robert De Niro, Harvey Keitel, screenwriter Mardik Martin and Scorsese’s personal assistant Steven Prince, who played the gun dealer in TAXI DRIVER (1976) and apparently wasn’t too removed from that character in real life. Robertson also claims to have had torrid affairs with Geneviève Bujold, Jennifer O’Neil and several other renowned beauties during the time period specified in INSOMNIA.
That period also saw Robertson becoming a movie producer with CARNY (1980), starring Jodie Foster and Gary Busey, a fraught experience that made him realize he’d be better off doing other things. Speaking of which, The Band broke up during this period, due in part to Robertson spending so much time with Scorsese. Robertson’s shifting priorities are evident in these pages, which lavish the majority of their attention on Hollywoodians and treat music industry folk as an afterthought.
This is an admittedly slight book. Its arc is pretty standard—with Robertson coming to the Earth-shattering realization that drugs and casual hook-ups aren’t good life choices—and doesn’t contain much info about Scorsese or Robertson I didn’t already know. What makes INSOMNIA a fun read is all the name dropping and sordid detail, of which I really wish there was more.