Song-Soundtracks

Gareth Higgins on SONG-SOUNDTRACKS

The sound of movies has been on my mind since Robbie Robertson died a couple of weeks ago, because for me the First Nations-Canadian songwriter, storyteller, frontman of The Band was inseparable from cinema. His songs are so evocative that they are almost already visual entities - my imagination of small town Louisiana (or somewhere like Louisiana) came from his Somewhere Down the Crazy River; the first Native American stories that I heard told by a Native American were from Robertson’s work - especially Contact from the Underworld of Redboy; the sadness of damaged relationships, from life partnership to creative “families” to activist community is made manifest in She’s Not Mine, This is Where I Get Off, and Once Were Brothers; the murk and awfulness of the life at the center of Martin Scorsese’s film The Irishman perfectly echoed in I Hear You Paint Houses. If you close your eyes listening to a Robbie Robertson song, you’re there.