Testimony

by Robbie Robertson

  Bob wrote throughout the recording process, pulling together enough material for an album to come out on Asylum in conjunction with the tour starting in January. Rob Fraboni was the engineer at the Village, and I liked working with him right away. He was fast and deliberate, and gave off a good vibe in the studio. Once we were set up, each song Bob pulled out of his satchel was a new challenge. On “Going, Going, Gone” I got to try out my new red Strat’s whammy bar, pushing it down so far the strings looked like they were hanging off the body of the guitar. We were rollin’ and tumblin’ with Levon’s wicked beat on “Tough Mama.” Bob had a gem of a song up his sleeve called “Forever Young,” and he wanted to try it in a couple of different ways. When we played it straight, though, Bob just sang it to pieces—it gave you goose bumps. We also did an up-tempo version of it, but Rob Fraboni kept pushing for the emotional take of “Forever Young,” and we ended up using both versions on the record.

  The days and the music flew by. All I knew was we were having a rare old time. When we sailed through “Something There Is About You” my feet weren’t even touching the ground. As Rob and I were setting up to mix the album, Bob came into the control room and asked me to play on one more song. He sat at the piano and I picked up an acoustic Martin D-28. He played through one verse to give me the flavor and then we cut it. This was “Dirge for Martha,” and I think we only did one take. That session reminded me of late nights eight years earlier, Bob and me playing music in our hotel rooms.

  After we mixed the album, Bob said he wanted to call the record Ceremonies of the Horsemen. Then he did a couple of paintings for the cover and decided Planet Waves worked better. I didn’t worry about how this album stacked up against Bob’s other records or what we had done together in the past. This was a pure reflection of where we were at during this particular period—that’s it. Sure, there was some pressure to get a record out in time for the tour, but to me it was an accurate document of those couple of weeks at the end of 1973.

  —

  For our first Christmas in Malibu, it was 80 degrees Fahrenheit, and it felt as magical as it did unreal. David and Cher bought a stuffed animal for my kids so big we had to force it through the doorway, and David gave me my first VCR, a beast of a machine, with big three-quarter-inch tapes that lasted just an hour. Dominique was going into full pregnancy mode: exercise, healthy diet, no smoking or drinking of any kind. She would check the I Ching and pendulums regarding our unborn child. All indications were it would be a boy.

  The holiday break that year was a short one. David Geffen had brought in Bill Graham and his partner, Barry Imhoff, to produce the Dylan/Band tour, and right after Christmas we went to the Los Angeles Forum for a run-through. We were testing out ideas on the run, and David was trying to give us feedback. There were different elements to the performance—Bob and the Band playing together, Bob doing some acoustic songs on his own, the Band playing on its own, and the finale. But in what order, and who should be where, and when?

  By this time, Bob had stopped smoking and was doing exercises to get in shape for the road. Sometimes I’d walk into the dressing room and he would be standing on his head up against the wall. I wished that I had the courage to stop smoking for this tour too. The definitive word on how truly bad cigarettes were for you hadn’t come down full force yet. An unfunny joke went around that tobacco was the revenge of the red man against the white man, but ironically my first puffs of tobacco were on the Six Nations Indian Reserve, where it grew wild and my cousins rolled it in newspaper.

  The day after New Year’s 1974, the Band and Bob boarded a leased 727 for our first show in Chicago, with David Geffen, Elliot Roberts, and company, and Barry Imhoff and his crew on hand to help us launch the tour into orbit. Barry Feinstein was the personal photographer for the tour, and Bob’s old friend Louis Kemp came along for the ride as well, helping out when he could.

  The whole affair was big news. Newsweek magazine was doing a cover story, and I had to laugh when David told me about their interview with Bob. David said he had warned the reporter not to ask Bob any political questions—he didn’t like to talk about politics. But when they brought the reporter into Bob’s suite, Bob was sitting on the bed with a sheet on his head, and the first question the reporter asked was about politics and President Nixon. “I’m not really into presidents,” Bob answered. “I prefer kings and queens.”

  Our first concert in Chicago revealed a lot about the structure of the show. David gave us very good advice, helping us to improve the timing of the different segments and to remove unnecessary moments, like Bob standing over to the side and playing rhythm guitar during the Band’s set. We started kicking off the show with a ripping version of “Most Likely You Go Your Way (and I’ll Go Mine).” Then Bob suggested we end the show with it as well, like bookends. I’d never heard of that before, so we gave it a shot.

  We played two nights at Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto, and a lot of our old friends came by to give their regards. Uncle Natie had been released from prison, and he brought the family and semiretired Toronto mob boss Paul Volpe with him to the concert and after party. I was especially happy to see my cousins David and Vicki, who were all grown up and very cool. Paul Volpe, in great humor, took in the success of our whole setup. “Jaime, you guys are cleaning up! What are you, printing money? Come on, how do your uncle and I get in on this?” The audience reception in Toronto was fantastic, it was as if our concert fiasco at Massey Hall in ’65 had never happened.

  At our show at the Omni in Atlanta, Otis Redding’s former manager, Phil Walden, came to see us and brought along Chip Carter, son of Georgia governor Jimmy Carter. After the concert, Phil and Chip invited us back to the governor’s mansion for an after party, where we met Governor Carter and his lovely wife, Rosalynn—they were so welcoming and friendly, you couldn’t help but think he had to be the coolest governor in the country. Later that night, Phil and I sat over in a corner and talked about the tremendous loss of Otis Redding. I told Phil that I thought Otis was unquestionably one of the greatest singers God had ever put on this earth. He nodded. “Here’s something I bet you didn’t know,” he said. “Duane Allman told me you were his favorite guitar player. After your first couple albums came out back in 1970, that’s what he said.” That news completely made my night, tinged as it was by the thought of Duane’s tragic death a few years after Otis’s.

  Just then, Governor Carter came over to me and said, “Let’s take a picture together.” We went into the front foyer and stood in front of a painting of George Washington with his hand inside his coat. I put my hand inside my T-shirt, Washington style, and so did the governor. We had a good laugh taking the photo. A few moments later, I saw Gregg Allman and Buddy Miles coming out of a bathroom together. I looked at Chip Carter and he just winked at me.

  I said to Phil Walden, “This has to be the hippest governor’s mansion ever.”

  He put his arm over my shoulder. “I’m in the process of talking Jimmy into running for president.”

  When we played Madison Square Garden, with the crowd standing and cheering us on, I was very conscious of how on our last tour with Bob, in 1966, the audience had booed us most nights. All around Europe, Australia, and North America, they’d condemned the music we were making together. Now here we were, playing Bob’s songs hard and direct, the same as before, and the world was accepting it with open arms. We hadn’t given up. We didn’t come around. The world had come around. All we had were those tape recordings from the 1966 tour to go on—we knew that music was real when there were many nonbelievers. We fought a good battle in ’66, but we won the war in ’74.

  The tour wrapped up on Valentine’s Day at the LA Forum with an early show where our kids and families could come and see what we actually did for a living. Barry Imhoff had the dressing rooms all suited out for the children to play. Bob pulled my daughter Alexandra up on his knee and Barry Feinstein took a photo. As we had in New York, we recorded the shows at the Forum for the live album. K
nowing this was the last round of this heavyweight fight, we played our hearts out. Bob took no prisoners, and the Band floated like a butterfly and stung like a bee. There’d been no slack on this tour. Everybody rose to the occasion and gave their all.

  At the end of our last show, Bob thanked Bill Graham and Barry Imhoff and the whole crew for doing such a great job. The only problem was he didn’t thank David Geffen, who was in the audience with a bunch of his friends. This tour had been David’s idea, and he had overseen all the important elements of making it such a success. Bob hadn’t meant to overlook his contribution; he was just specifically thanking the road crew and everybody who was in the trenches day in and day out. But not thanking David was unfortunate, and very hurtful to him.

  I knew how upset he was, so I called Bob the next morning and said we should go over to David’s office and tell him how appreciative we were, and that not thanking him hadn’t been purposeful or meant as a slight. Bob agreed, we drove over, and the three of us talked it through until, I think, David felt a little better. Cher suggested we throw David a special birthday party. We agreed, and Bob helped organize a crazy carnival bash for him where we played and sang with Cher, hoping it would ease his disappointment.

  —

  A few weeks after the tour wrapped up, I called Artie Mogull at Capitol Records and told him I was going to send someone to pick up the painting we had used on the cover of Moondog Matinee.

  “I think somebody already picked it up,” he said.

  I hadn’t sent anybody, so I didn’t understand. He said he’d look into it. A little while later he called me back with strange news: one of the executives at Capitol had taken the painting, claiming it was his.

  “What?” I said, shocked. “Who took it?”

  “Rupert Perry,” he replied. “He’s from England.”

  I’d never heard of this Rupert guy, but I called him and told him that Edward Kasper, the artist who’d painted the cover, had given it to me. It was my vision, and I’d been loaning it to Capitol at Artie’s request. Rupert Perry gave me some horseshit legal explanation, but basically he stole the painting. Bob Cato wrote a letter, as did Edward Kasper. But Perry ended up sending the painting to England like a thief in the night, and I was never able to retrieve it. I pondered revenge.

  With some money in my pocket from the tour, I called Norman Harris to check out some more guitars. Over the next few months, I purchased a 1919 Martin 00 45K (one of a kind), a 1960 Gibson Les Paul Black Beauty, a 1928 Martin 000 45 gut-string (a gem), a 1920 Gibson Model O, a Martin 1901 1-42, a 1951 Martin D-28, a 1961 Gibson Double Neck Mandolina (very rare), a 1951 Fender Broadcaster, a Martin 5K Ukulele, and a 1938 Rickenbacker Lap Steel. On one of Norman’s visits he mentioned a singer-songwriter he thought I might like to hear named Hirth Martinez, who played under the name Hirth from Earth and sang about UFOs and sci-fi stuff. I listened to some of Hirth’s material and thought he was one of a kind. I hoped at some point we could find a way to work together.

  First, though, came the work of putting together a live album from the tour. I went through all the rough mixes of the recordings with Bob and the guys to see what we had. The LA shows were the best, and Rob Fraboni and his assistants had captured it well. As I started mixing the album with Rob and Nat Jeffreys, the excitement and subtleties of the performances really stayed with me. Some of Bob’s vocals had unusual nuances to them. On different performances he would change the words on “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door” and “Rainy Day Women #12 & 35.” After I got four or five songs mixed, I went to play them for Bob. They sounded hot, and he laughed out loud at some of our “power drill” performances. At the same time, I could see he was bothered about something. I didn’t know if it was personal, so I didn’t want to ask. The next time we got together for a listening session, I played the version of “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door” from the Madison Square Garden show that Phil Ramone had recorded, which had a certain vibe that I preferred. But Bob seemed distracted. This time I asked what was on his mind.

  “I don’t think I want to do this Asylum Records deal with Geffen,” he said. “It doesn’t feel right to me.” This came out of nowhere and caught me off guard.

  “But I thought we’d already agreed to do it with Asylum,” I said. “David’s already made the arrangements with Capitol for the Band. I don’t understand. What’s not working for you?”

  Bob couldn’t explain. He just repeated that it didn’t feel right to him. I tried to imagine what could have turned him around. Planet Waves had gone to number one on Asylum. Was it that he had been on Columbia Records since the beginning and felt like that’s where he belonged? Was it an “LA vibe” he couldn’t relate to? Was it that he didn’t want to be another feather in David Geffen’s cap?

  I had a closer friendship with David than Bob or the other guys in the Band did, and felt a bit torn by this change of heart. I told the guys what Bob had said and that David had put this tour together with the belief he would get the live album. But the guys were indifferent as to whether the record was on Asylum or Columbia—they didn’t feel any particular sense of loyalty either way. This was exactly what I had been afraid of when David and I sat in his car on my first night in Malibu. I had tried my best to explain that “street” element, the “chill” that could surface with the Band and with Bob, like a freeze-out.

  I called David Braun, who was also Bob’s lawyer, to ask if it was wrong or unethical to bail out of this deal. He said he had already spoken with Bob about it and that “a man has a right to change his mind. I’m going to call Geffen now and tell him.”

  About an hour later, David Geffen called me, stunned by the news. He couldn’t believe this was happening. I told him I really didn’t know why Bob was having second thoughts. He said David Braun was setting up a meeting where we would all get together and settle the issue.

  The meeting took place at Rick’s house out at Broad Beach. It was awkward to begin with and then grew terribly uncomfortable when David Braun suggested that he, Bob, and the Band would go into the next room and decide yes or no on whether the live album would go to Asylum. When we adjourned to the next room I asked everyone, “Haven’t we basically given our word to David Geffen that he would get the record?”

  “I haven’t given my word to nobody,” said Levon.

  “I want to go with whatever’s the best deal,” stated Rick.

  “I know we can make a better deal with Columbia,” David Braun interjected. It seemed that Bob had pretty much made up his mind not to go with Asylum.

  “This tour wouldn’t even have happened without David,” I declared.

  “Whose side are you on, anyway?” Richard asked.

  That stung. I’d had enough. “Okay, fuck it! Don’t give it to him. Don’t give him nothing,” I blurted.

  David Braun called us together. “Okay, let’s take a vote.”

  Everybody said no. What could I do? This was my band, my brothers. Bob and I had been playing music together for nine years and were like family. But David Geffen had become a good friend, and I felt he hadn’t done anything wrong. So I didn’t vote, not that it would have mattered anyway.

  We rejoined David Geffen in the main room and David Braun tried to explain the reasoning behind the “no” consensus. When he got to the part about how “it was like he was taking food out of the mouths of our children,” David Geffen couldn’t take it anymore. He got up and walked out.

  But he had a lot at stake with the live album. It was already assumed in the industry and beyond that David had the record. So now he had to match Columbia’s offer to convince Bob and the Band to let him release it on Asylum.

  Afterward he called me, furious that I had betrayed him. “You’re the only one of those guys smart enough to have come up with this scheme,” he said.

  Stunned, I fired back. “What are you talking about? I stood up for you. I told them this tour wouldn’t have existed without you.” But he was too upset. He said he’d heard me in the next roo
m saying, “Don’t give it to him.” He thought I’d gone along with the whole thing over money, even though my end wasn’t all that significant, just one fifth of half of the deal, and I would never have jeopardized our friendship over it. But it would take some time for those wounds to heal.

  —

  The live album Before the Flood came out on June 20, 1974, on Asylum Records. Rock journalist Robert Christgau reviewed it, saying, “Without qualification, this is the craziest and strongest rock and roll ever recorded. All analogous live albums fall flat.” Elliot Roberts put together some gigs for the Band in the beginning of summer, but as soon as they were over, I needed to get back to Dominique and the girls. We had a baby coming, and nobody was more excited than Alexandra and Delphine.

  On July 18, 1974, Sebastian Barnaby Robertson was born at Saint John’s Hospital in Santa Monica—our first child not born in Montreal. Once again, Dominique was a real mercenary giving birth. She brought Sebastian into this world with the gusto of Joan of Arc. Holding Sebastian was different from holding the girls. When he stretched or pushed, you could feel his strength. His little noggin was tough too, as he banged it against my arm or chest. Dominique insisted on having a real nest for our growing family. We ended up purchasing the largest house in the Malibu Colony, number 34, where Carole King, Shelley Winters, and Lee Marvin had all lived before. Dominique eventually found a couple from Montreal, Jacques and Rosemary, to move in, since she was still persistent in wanting to have French-speaking help.

  One day, while Bob was over visiting, he said he liked the sound of French being spoken in our house. He suggested he and I take French lessons. I told him that the actor Donald Sutherland, who was married to a Frenchwoman, had told me about a great language teacher named Michel Thomas who worked with a lot of actors. So Bob and I started taking regular lessons from Michel in the tearoom at my house. Jacques would bring in little French sandwiches and snacks, and after Michel had left Bob and I would practice a few phrases together, but our conversations soon turned to a different subject. Bob confided that things were becoming a bit strained between him and Sara. He said he needed to go to New York for a while and let things settle down. I was sorry to hear this. Bob and Sara had been an inspiration to us. Hell, I had stood up for them when they got married. Bob seemed confused about what was happening, and every time the subject came up it sounded a little worse.