‘Once Were Brothers: Robbie Robertson and the Band’ Is A Well Done (If One-Sided) Musical Memoir 

Being a fan of The Band is like being the child in a divorce. The feud between guitarist Robbie Robertson and drummer Levon Helm simmered from around the time of The Last Waltz up until Helm’s death in 2012 and their dueling narratives – “I wrote everything” vs. “He stole everything” – made people pick sides and have opinions on matters they may or may not have been well informed about.

The 2019 documentary Once Were Brothers: Robbie Robertson and The Band tells the guitarist’s side of things and is for the most part a lush chronicle of one of America’s, well, and Canada’s, most important artists. Sometimes it felt like The Band fit the entire history of America in a single song. Gaelic folk, Delta blues and New Orleans jazz echoed through their music while their lyrics, mostly though not exclusively written by Robertson, evoked the myths buried deep in our national memory. The film is currently available for rent on a variety of streaming services.

Robertson’s an easy guy to be cynical about — I mean, he literally went Hollywood — but he’s had an interesting life and knows how to tell a good story. He grew up in Toronto but spent time with his mother’s family on the Six Nations of the Grand River Reserve. When he was a teenager he learned that his real father was not the abusive man who raised him but a Jewish gangster who died before he was born.

His mother’s family taught Robertson how to play guitar and hearing rock n’ roll for the first time made him want to do it for a living. He landed a job as the teenage guitarist for transplanted Arkansawyers Ronnie Hawkins & The Hawks. Hawkins appears in the film and told the young picker, “You ain’t gonna make much money but you’re gonna get more pussy than Frank Sinatra.” The Hawks’ drummer was about the same age as him and, “seemed to glow in the dark.” His name was Levon Helm.

Hawkins likens Helm and Robertson to “Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer.” As other band members came and went, they were replaced by young Canadian musicians that would make up the future members of The Band. They outgrew Hawkins and struck out on their own. While in New York for gigs and recording sessions they met Bob Dylan. The R&B loving barflys in The Hawks were dismissive of Dylan’s folk strumming and college kid fan base but fortunately so was Dylan.

Dylan hired The Hawks as his backing band as he “went electric” resulting in them getting booed and having stuff thrown at them at venues around the world. Helm got sick of it and went to work on an oil rig down south. Robertson was heartbroken but his spirits were lifted after meeting his future wife Dominique while on tour in Paris.

After the tour, The Hawks followed Dylan to Upstate New York and rented an “ugly pink house.” They began woodshedding and cutting songwriter demos in the basement.” Helm soon returned and the musicians enjoyed the simple pursuits of country living. Known around town as “the band,” they adopted it as their name, a nod to their egalitarian creative process. Like so many points in the story, it’s hard to resist saying, “The rest is history.”

The Band’s artistic legacy rests on their first two albums and as it often does, success brought substance abuse, self-destruction and interpersonal tension. Robertson presents himself as the straight family man in contrast to his wild eyed car crashing bandmates while omitting much discussion of his own drug use. Former tour manager Jonathan Taplin says by their third album, Robertson took over the lion’s share of The Band’s songwriting because he was the most disciplined but considering that’s also when the quality of their material started to slip I’m not sure that’s a winning argument. In 1974, The Band went on a massive stadium tour with Bob Dylan where they were received like, “The Second Coming.” Heavy touring exacerbated the group’s drug use, especially keyboardist Richard Manuel.

Robertson was tired of touring and The Last Waltz was to be their final gig before transitioning into a studio band. The group didn’t so much break up as evaporate. “Everybody just forgot to come back,” is how Robertson explains it. According to him, if any of his bandmates asked him to collaborate on new material, “I would have said yes in a minute.” This is hard to reconcile with the fact that The Band reformed in 1983 without him. No mention is made of this reunion nor Manuel’s 1986 suicide and bassist Rick Danko’s death at 55 in 1999. Surviving Band keyboardist Garth Hudson does not appear in the film.

Sadly, in the final minutes of the film, Robertson throws Helm under the bus, suggesting their disagreements over songwriting credits were misplaced anger due to the drummer’s personal problems. He then brings out a parade of people to back him up, claiming Helm couldn’t see reason and wouldn’t let go of a grudge. There’s two sides to every story and Robertson has every right to tell his, but it seems cowardly to disparage a dead man who can’t defend himself though he suggests they made some sort of peace on Helm’s deathbed.

Whatever you think of the decades long drama of The Band and its former members, Once Were Brothers: Robbie Robertson and The Band is excellently done and will appeal to any fan of the group or music documentaries in general. It’s a good rule not to get in the middle of family squabbles and the truth of who’s right or wrong is probably somewhere in the middle. More importantly, all the backbiting and disagreements and gossip ultimately distract us from what really matters; the beautiful music The Band made when they all got along.

Benjamin H. Smith is a New York based writer, producer and musician. Follow him on Twitter:@BHSmithNYC

Where to stream Once Were Brothers: Robbie Robertson and The Band