ROBBIE ROBERTSON
Robbie Robertson, former backing guitarist for Bob Dylan and six-string mainspring for The Band, has a confession to make. He’s not really a rock musician.
“You know, sometimes I have felt over the years – and maybe now more than ever – that in the songs I write, it’s almost like I’m scoring the songs [as if for a movie] instead of following some kind of rock ’n’ roll tradition,” he says, explaining that his richly emotive playing is often inspired by imaginary film scenes played out in his imagination. “There’s a mood, there’s a sound, there’s a heartbeat. There’s a thing going on that takes me inside the story and takes me inside this little movie that I’m writing.
“It’s kind of a second nature for me,” he admits. “I don’t know if subconsciously I think I’m in a different line of work from other people in music [laughs]. I don’t know. I don’t know that I completely understand it either… and my feeling about that is it is quite instinctual. I really don’t know why I’m drawn in that direction, but it feels good, so I go with it.”
It’s not too surprising, then, that Robertson’s new solo album, , consists
