Testimony by Robbie Robertson

William Heinemann £20

Reviewed by Alan Taylor

IN the acid and alcohol-soaked annals of rock ’n’ roll The Band occupy a hallowed space, most notably as Bob Dylan’s backing group. Robbie Robertson, who is now 73, was their lead guitarist and principal songwriter and, to a degree, their Paul McCartney. For while his four confederates became increasingly flaky and addicted to booze and drugs, it was Robertson who pulled the strings as well as strumming them.

Testimony, which runs (at Bolt-like speed) to some 500 pages, ends, appropriately, in 1976 with the farewell concert that was filmed by Martin Scorsese as The Last Waltz. Shortly after that The Band agreed to meet at a studio to record the final album they were due to produce for their record company. But only Robertson turned up. “The Band had come to a crossroads,” he writes. “So many mixed emotions leads to confusion – and confusion can lead to self-destruction.”

Robertson’s story takes us back to a simpler, more sexist and surreal era when an ability to play guitar was the passport to a hedonistic lifestyle with a fearsome mortality rate. Among the prematurely dead making guest appearances are Buddy Holly, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Nick Drake, Brian Jones, Gram Parsons and John Lennon. Those, such as Robertson, who have survived to become septuagenarians have done so more through luck than design,

The many women who pass through these pages are invariably described as “lovelies”, invited to green rooms or bedrooms to add piquancy to an evening’s entertainment. One of the more comic scenes in Robertson’s book is recalled near its close when its author has become friends with Henry Miller. By then in his eighties, Miller was as creepily lecherous as ever, encouraging two young Asian girls to join him in bed even though he had to be helped to get there himself.

Robertson hails from Toronto. His mother, who was born on the Six Nations Indian Reserve, was the parent to whom he was closest. The man he thought of as his father was a violent drunk. His real father, he belatedly discovered, was Jewish and a gambler who ran with a rum crowd. One of Robertson’s uncles, meanwhile, had a reputation as “a Canadian Meyer Lanski”, otherwise known as “the Mob’s accountant”.

Such colourful antecedents may have given Robertson a certain sang froid. The portrait he offers of himself is of someone who is easy going and tolerant to a fault. His initial break came when, aged 16, he was invited to join Ronnie Hawkins’ band, The Hawks.

Dylan first makes his entrance on page 165. Robertson had been invited to meet him in New York. It was as if a “lightning bolt” had shot into the room. Puffing on a cigarette “harder than Bette Davis” and “dressed in a dark red polka-dot shirt and blue striped pants”, Dylan crackled with electricity.

The year was 1966 and he was in the midst of the transition from folk hero to electric pariah. He was about to embark on a world tour and was keen for Robertson to join him, which he agreed to do so long as his buddies in what would later become The Band were part of the package.

Anyone reading Testimony in the hope of discovering something new about the latest Nobel Literature laureate may be frustrated. Writing songs at a lick he is, according to his loyal and discreet disciple, not only one of the greatest songwriters ever but also “one of the greatest singers”. On the eve of his first marriage, to Sara Lownds, he asked Robertson to be a witness. “You mean be a best man at your wedding?” “Well, I don’t know about ‘best man’,” Dylan replied. “That’s quite a commitment. Maybe ‘good man’ or ‘very good man’. How would that be?” Thus the myth is burnished further.

Surely The Band’s most telling contribution to musical history are the Basement Tapes, 140 songs recorded with Dylan – then recuperating from a motorcycle accident – in a rudimentary studio in the boondocks of New York. Thereafter The Band played on, producing at least two albums – Music From Big Pink (1968) and The Band (1969) – which deserve a place in any rock fan’s collection. But by 1976 it was time to call it a day. It was either that, suggests Robertson, or die young men’s deaths. As he told Dylan: “The Band has to get off the road. It’s become a danger zone....”