Robbie Robertson attends a gala premiere at the 2019 Toronto International Film Festival. Robertson's posthumous memoir details a hedonistic time in the 1970s.Frank Gunn/The Canadian Press
Hey, mister, can you tell me where a man might find a bed?
Temporarily split from his long-time wife in 1978, Robbie Robertson went big-game hunting. “I know it’s crazy, but I’m trying to put a move on Sophia Loren,” the rock star told his best friend Martin Scorsese at a sophisticated party in New York one night, as recounted in his new posthumous memoir Insomnia. “I’m taking a shot.”
Upon meeting Robertson, the Italian bombshell had expressed interest in the new concert film about the Band, titled The Last Waltz. “Martin Scorsese has made this music movie with Robbie here,” she told a friend. “I must see it!”
When the actress’s film-producer husband Carlo Ponti left the party early, Robertson turned on the charm, suggesting a nightcap back at his hotel suite. “Sophia might as well admit she’s mine,” he thought to himself.
But when everybody dispersed at the end of the evening, Loren kissed Robertson on both cheeks and gave him the old arrivederci. “It was so lovely meeting you, and I’m looking forward to seeing your movie,” she said, ducking into her limousine. “Good night, darling!”
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Loren’s rebuff was an exception to the rule, judging by Robertson’s book that covers much sex and plenty drugs, but very little rock ’n’ roll. During the window of time in the late 1970s that’s covered, the heartthrob musician enjoyed the company of actresses Geneviève Bujold, Jennifer O’Neill and Carole Bouquet, as well as French film editor Martine Barraqué.
Robertson was on some streak − if it’s Monday, it must be Tuesday Weld (also named).
“He could be hedonistic,” says Jared Levine, Robertson’s manager since the mid-1990s. “Robbie got married in 1968 and hadn’t been out on the prowl since he was a member of the Hawks. He was going to Hollywood parties and women were attracted to him.”
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Robertson died of prostate cancer on Aug. 9, 2023, at 80. Insomnia is the follow-up to his well-received 2016 memoir Testimony, which covers the life of the Toronto-born songwriter and guitarist up to the Band’s Last Waltz farewell concert in 1976, at San Francisco’s Winterland Ballroom on American Thanksgiving.
At the end of Testimony, Robertson literally closed a chapter in his life: “Bring on tomorrow, I want to get some on me. Let’s turn the page, let’s take the high road, let’s break some rules …"
Insomnia picks up right where Testimony left off. Robertson’s then-wife, Montreal-born Dominique Robertson, threw him out of their house in Malibu, Calif., in 1977. “She said her needs were being overshadowed by my work and fame,” Robertson writes.
He then bunked with Scorsese (who he called “Maestro”) at the director’s Los Angeles mansion. The cocaine-dusted tell-all focuses on their bacchanalian bro-ship while the two were finishing The Last Waltz. It was an Odd Couple-like relationship, with Scorsese as the fusspot Felix.
Levine says news of the book was not well received by Scorsese, who didn’t want to revisit a reckless lifestyle that resulted in his hospitalization in 1978, after a near-fatal overdose of cocaine and prescription drugs.
“This was a difficult time for both of them, but more so for Marty,” Levine says. “For him, the period was very dark. It was dark for Robbie as well, but Robbie loved that darkness.”
Though edits to the manuscript were made at Scorsese’s request, Levine says the Mean Streets director’s preference “would be for it not to come out.”
Scorsese and Robertson were in such a malnourished state at one point, that Francis Ford Coppola hired a chef for them. “Look at you two − skin and bones," the Godfather director remarked upon seeing them. Coppola, along with Brian De Palma, was invited to see a rough cut of The Last Waltz. (The story of the visit involves Robertson failing to properly simmer Coppola’s homemade spaghetti sauce because of a coke deal.)
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Robertson hung with an elite crowd, and his name-dropping in the book is relentless: “My friend Warren Beatty” and “my old pal Jack Nicholson.” Robert De Niro, who was preparing for his role as boxer Jake LaMotta in Scorsese’s Raging Bull at the time, is “Bob.”
“Everything was impressive to Robbie at the time,” explains Levine. “He’s a kid from Scarborough and Six Nations, and all of a sudden, he’s making a movie with Martin Scorsese and meeting all his friends.”
At the end of Insomnia, Robertson and his wife (who contributes an afterword to the book) reconcile. They would later divorce in 2003. The musician’s death in 2023 triggered a legal battle over his estate between his three children from the first marriage and his second wife, Toronto restaurateur Janet Zuccarini. Arbitration in Los Angeles to settle the lawsuits is currently pending.
“It’s unfortunate,” Levine says. “It’s not something that anybody wanted to happen, least of all Robbie.”