In 1986, I visited Eric Clapton at his home in Surrey, England, in hopes of seducing him into taking part in my documentary tribute to Chuck Berry on his 60th birthday. Keith Richards had already signed on as music director and was putting together a great backup band, but both Keith and I also wanted some world-class guest artists to collaborate with Chuck onstage.
Eric’s then wife, Pattie Boyd Harrison Clapton, welcomed me graciously, serving me a cup of tea in the library and then discreetly disappearing so Eric and I could chat. He said he’d just come out of the studio, and asked if I’d like to hear what he’d recorded. Although it’s treacherous to preview an artist’s work in progress and then have to give an opinion, I was cheered to hear bold, muscular, big-band blues pouring out of his sound system, something very different from what he’d done before.
When Eric asked me what I thought, I understood this was a test: Does this filmmaker know his music? I responded, “It sounds like one of my favorite artists, Bobby ‘Blue’ Bland.”
Eric flashed a big smile. “That’s exactly what I was trying for. Robbie Robertson asked me to write and record an original track for Marty Scorsese’s new film, The Color of Money.” Clearly, I had hit the nail on the head, which teed up a very productive working relationship with Eric on Chuck Berry: Hail! Hail! Rock ’n’ Roll (1987). It also established that the creative fingers of Robbie Robertson stretched everywhere. (The lead guitarist and songwriter for the seminal Americana group the Band, Robbie collaborated frequently with Bob Dylan and wrote essential tracks for the Band, such as “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down” and “King Harvest.”)
I’d invited Robbie to be onstage for that concert film, but he had to decline because he was mixing the music for Marty’s film. However, Robbie did make an important contribution to my film, interviewing Chuck in his home and getting him to divulge some amazing revelations.
For the next 40 years, until his death, in 2023, I considered Robbie a valued friend, joining a multitude of hundreds, perhaps thousands, whom he’d charmed. Still, with all the great stories Robbie told me over the years about the incredible artists he’d known and collaborated with, nothing can match the intimacy and detail of his new book, Insomnia, about the germination of his friendship and collaboration with Marty.
The story begins after Marty had documented the Band’s farewell concert—featuring musical guests like Dylan, Joni Mitchell, and Neil Young—on Thanksgiving Day at San Francisco’s Winterland Ballroom in 1976, which became the concert movie The Last Waltz (1978). The catalyzing spark of Marty and Robbie’s bond came when both their wives threw them out into the cold. Neither man was prepared to gut it out on his own, so Marty invited Robbie to move into his Hollywood Hills pad while they collaborated on the postproduction of their great concert film.
Robbie’s hugely entertaining book candidly—and sometimes brutally—documents the cocaine-fueled high jinks of this film-and-music-making odd couple over two tumultuous years, covering the release of The Last Waltz through Marty’s Raging Bull (1980) and Robert Kaylor’s Carny (1980), which starred Gary Busey, Jodie Foster, and Robbie himself.
Robbie chronicles the evolution of their drug addiction as they began to live and work only at night, with Marty covering the windows to block out the sun so they were in constant darkness. As Robbie notes: “Nocturnal creatures move swiftly, silently, and some, on occasion, howl at the moon.”
Robbie was always a spellbinding storyteller, and this book is chockablock with wonderful tales featuring hundreds of the most well-known and colorful players of the 70s. Some of these episodes are hilarious, as when Francis Ford Coppola comes by to watch a cut of their film and is shocked by their gaunt appearance: “Look at you two—skin and bones. You’re withering away. Do you eat? I’m going to hire you a full-time chef.”
Another bizarre but priceless moment plays out when a Hells Angels poet named Bill “Sweet William” Fritsch, who recited a poem at the farewell concert, becomes unhinged when he sees a rough cut of The Last Waltz. Robbie writes, “Sweet William went absolutely berserk. He started ripping seats out of the theater and screaming at the top of his lungs. It scared the hell out of the Cannes Festival people who were in the screening room.” Why was Sweet William so distressed? Because Marty had edited down his poem, motivating this “wounded artist” to take Scorsese’s assistant editor hostage and demand that Robbie and Marty come immediately to the screening room with thousands of dollars in ransom money and a pound of cocaine.
Robbie saves the day when he suddenly realizes he knows Sonny Barger, the head of the Oakland Hells Angels (Robbie knew everyone), and suggests that Barger come down to screen the film and adjudicate a truce. Hearing Barger’s name, Sweet William quickly backs down and agrees to demur if Marty will edit his poem out of the film entirely. However, this rankles Marty, the uncompromising director, who suddenly starts to argue until Robbie reminds him of the dire situation they must escape. The absurdity of this moment rings indelibly true, indicative of the outrageous filmmaker exploits of 70s Hollywood.
Robbie delights in breathing life into his and Marty’s high-flying collaboration, reveling in their successes and bragging about bedding many of the most beautiful women in Hollywood, New York, and Europe during their two years of ecstasy.
All this self-destructive behavior, especially with cocaine eating away at the septum and inflaming the lungs, propelled the lifelong asthmatic director to a catastrophic smashup in ’79, as he was working on Raging Bull. Marty had a near-fatal respiratory episode and was put on life support in a New York hospital.
Robbie rushed to his bedside. “I had been living with Marty for going on two years and was a co-conspirator in his turbulent ways. I knew firsthand how bad it had gotten with him and had watched it accelerate through my own drug haze. My stomach was tied in knots, and I could feel my hands trembling—I truly loved this man and couldn’t bear the thought of anything bad happening to him,” he writes.
As we know, Marty pulled out of it, cleaned up his act, and delivered the incomparable Raging Bull—marrying Isabella Rossellini in the process. Robbie also came to his senses and returned to his wife and family in Malibu. And the story didn’t end there—for the next 35 years, Robbie continued as Marty’s musical muse and collaborator, producing music for a great number of Scorsese’s films, from Casino (1995) to Killers of the Flower Moon (2023).
“I wanted to be as helpful as I could, to be there for Marty in whatever came up. If it had to do with the music, I wanted him to know he could count on me.” Insomnia paints this consummate, artistic, and personal collaboration in graphic detail.
Taylor Hackford is an Oscar-winning filmmaker and former president of the Directors Guild of America. His films include An Officer and a Gentleman, The Devil’s Advocate, and Ray. He is currently writing his memoir, Against All Odds, which will be published by Hachette in the fall of 2026
