CHAPTER 1
September 1978
Irolled up to my hotel, right in the heart of the French Quarter. As I stepped out of the car, beneath the iron railings of the hotel balconies, the Crescent City sent out its “bon temps rouler” welcome: the rumble of a funky brass band from over in Jackson Square, mixed with a crying guitar drifting up from Bourbon Street. The scent of spicy gumbo, fresh beignets, and chicory coffee wafted through the thick, humid air like a voodoo tonic pulling you under its spell.
New Orleans. I had been infatuated with the city since I was thirteen years old, growing up in Canada with my ears tuned to the radio airwaves blasting out from the American South. I soaked up the rhythm and blues of Fats Domino and Smiley Lewis; then Professor Longhair, Huey “Piano” Smith and the Clowns, and Shirley and Lee. I got completely hooked. On top of that, this was the actual birthplace of jazz, with the amazing Louis Armstrong leading the march.
What was in the water down there?!
Over the years, I had come to New Orleans many times, as both a musician and a pilgrim. The deeper I dug in, the better it got. Eventually, I got to know all these amazing players personally: Allen Toussaint, the Meters, Big Chief Monk Boudreaux, Dr. John, the Neville Brothers. These guys had a unique take on rock and roll: They were singing a different language, making feel-good music, music that celebrated itself. I rejoiced in that.
The invite for this trip came from Robert De Niro, whom I had met a couple of years back through my housemate and
close friend Martin Scorsese. By now, I had been living with Marty for almost two years. Over that time, Bob and I had gotten to enjoy each other’s company. I admired Marty and Bob’s director-actor relationship, which had begun with the groundbreaking Mean Streets and continued with Taxi Driver and New York, New York.
For a while now, Bob had been trying to convince Marty to make a movie based on the life of boxing legend Jake LaMotta, in which Bob would play Jake. Marty hadn’t committed yet, but Bob was all in: He had already been working with Jake on mastering his ways, his boxing technique, the sound and rhythm of his voice, even his walk. It was dedication, a quiet study. Bob had his eye on it all. It was the first time I had ever seen an actor taking a role in like that.
As a show of his appreciation, Bob was bringing Jake down to New Orleans to see the much-awaited rematch between Muhammad Ali and Leon Spinks at the Superdome. Knowing I was a longtime fight fan and had a special connection to the city, he had asked me to join them. Harvey Keitel, another extraordinary talent from the Scorsese circle, would be coming, too. Bob thought Harvey and I would make the whole trip more fun. Because Jake was there, it would be work for Bob, but he didn’t want it to be all work.
He made it sound so inviting: We’re gonna let the good times roll. I’d just spent a week of sleepless nights at the Telluride Film Festival, and I was feeling tired in my bones. But between the fight and the chance to be back in New Orleans, it was an offer I couldn’t refuse.
Bob and Harvey met me at my hotel later that afternoon. I didn’t know Harvey as well, but he seemed like a terrific guy. If
Marty and Bob loved Harvey, I wanted to love him, too. I figured Bob would have to tend to Jake and his wife, which meant Harvey and I could get a chance to hang. Harvey had a real street quality to him, and something about him was a little bit standoffish. But that was fine. We were all a little standoffish at times. But with one another we could sometimes let our guards down.
Jake and his wife were arriving the following day, so the three of us had the night to ourselves. I told Bob and Harvey, “I just got word the Staple Singers are playing in town tonight; they’re incredible performers, and friends of mine. I’m gonna go, if you want to join me.”
They were in.
As we arrived at the venue, I saw a familiar face coming up the street toward me: Big Chief Bo Dollis from the Wild Magnolias tribe of the Mardi Gras Indians. The tribes were an old New Orleans tradition, formed by and made up of local African Americans who had historically been shut out of the fancy, racist Mardi Gras krewes. Years ago, the tribes used to meet up and battle, settling their scores in the streets, but over time, those battles had become musical. Instead of fighting, tribe members dressed in elaborate costumes and sang and danced— and whoever did it best would win the battle.
As chief of the Wild Magnolias, Bo possessed a deeper power. The locals treated chiefs like superheroes, like people who could conjure up a spell. They stood aside when a big chief of the Indians went by, whether he was wearing his ceremonial feathered outfit or not. My New Orleans musician friends the Neville Brothers told me about their uncle George Landry, better known as Big Chief Jolly, of the Wild Tchoupitoulas
Indians. On the morning of Mardi Gras, after they had finished sewing his uniform and working on the beads, he would come out of his house to find hundreds of people waiting to catch a glimpse of him. Women would faint upon seeing him. And when he started to move and sing, it would be all over.
Bo Dollis had a wonderful smile and sparkling eyes. You could feel the tradition in the way he looked and carried himself. He was also a wicked singer. I greeted Bo with open arms and introduced him to Bob and Harvey. He bowed his head, but clearly had no idea who they were, and they had no idea what a Black big chief Indian was all about, either.
Walking into the club, I found the Staples killing it on “I’ll Take You There”—Roebuck “Pops” Staples on his tremolo guitar, with his daughter Mavis and her sisters, Yvonne and Cleotha, belting it out. I sang along to Bob and Harvey like we were entering the cool zone. We were ushered to a table amid a packed crowd, mostly Black. In New Orleans, when it came to good live music, I always felt a welcoming vibe. A few moments later, a very pretty waitress came over to take our drink orders. Bob and Harvey were slow to decide while staring at her lovely face. We all broke out laughing, including the waitress, because the gazing was so obvious.
Every tune the Staples sang was more glorious than the next. They did my song “The Weight” like a gospel revival. What a thrill! I winked at the guys and said, “I haven’t seen the Staples since we did this tune with Marty filming The Last Waltz.” I gave Harvey a little backstory, explaining that they had started out as a strictly gospel group, then spread their wings into popular music, much as Sam Cooke and Aretha Franklin had done. But they never really left the church, in
their sound, and I loved that. Pops’s soft, soothing, sliding-tothe-note voice could weave a spell. And Mavis was one of the great gospel singers of all time. When she put that voice and feel into popular music, it didn’t get much better.
They finished their show with “Respect Yourself,” and the whole audience stood, chanting along with hands clapping time. The Staples’ harmonies not only soared to the heavens, but they brought the church way downtown.
“Let’s go backstage and say hello.” I motioned to the guys. When I walked into the dressing room, Mavis shrieked and nearly knocked me over with a huge hug. Yvonne and Cleotha threw kisses as I raved about how great the show had been. I introduced Bob and Harvey around the room, but I think Mavis might have been the only one who knew they were movie actors. I told Pops that his singing was better than ever, but I was still trying to figure out how he had gotten that beautiful guitar sound. He smiled with a shining light. “I’ve asked you before, and I’m gonna ask you again. That song, ‘The Weight,’ ” he said under his breath, “what’s it really about?”
I put my arm around his shoulders and confessed, “Pops, I’ll tell you, I’m still trying to get to the bottom of that myself, but when I do, you’ll be the first one I’m gonna call.”
Around noon the next day, Jake LaMotta and his wife, Deborah, arrived. Jake loomed large in my mind from all my years of boxing fandom, and I was surprised he wasn’t bigger in real life. He looked like any guy on the street, only his face was flat from people punching it. He and his wife both had strong
New York accents, but Jake had a warm spirit about him, and a nice smile. And yet, there was a little bit of an edge to him, which I found extra charming. He may have seemed like a regular guy, but when you looked closer, you saw something that made you think you wouldn’t want to cross him. There was something in his eyes—something behind his eyes and in his jaw. This guy could be a monster.
Earlier, I’d asked Bob and Harvey if they wanted to come with me to my favorite voodoo shop, F&F Botanica. “It’s not far from here. It’s in the Tremé neighborhood, right across from the Zulu headquarters.” They looked at me as if I were speaking a foreign language.
Bob leaned in: “You go ahead. I gotta try to settle things down between Jake and the wife. Something happened—I’m not sure what, but they’re having a big argument, and she’s pissed off and doesn’t want to come to the fight now. He’s pissed off that she’s pissed off, and I gotta see if I can stop the fight before we even get to the fight.”
I made a quick phone call and, not long after, exited the hotel just as an elegant tan Rolls-Royce pulled up to the curb to meet me. Behind the wheel was my old friend Allen Toussaint. Allen was a king in New Orleans, one of the greatest songwriters, producers, and piano players in the land. He was a man who brought some history with him—a classic, kind of like the car. Allen was also a true gentleman, a man of extreme courtesy. After we greeted each other and I climbed into the car, he neatly folded his suit jacket and laid it in the back seat so it wouldn’t get wrinkled.
We grabbed a bite at Dooky Chase’s, a New Orleans hot spot, the kind of place you wanted to stop by because there was
a good chance someone you wanted to see would be there. I asked Allen about the amazing records he had produced for Lee Dorsey, records I admired so much.
Allen smiled. “Can you believe it? Lee still has an auto repair shop in town.”
“I gotta say, his vocal style is one of the most incredible flukes of all time, but so great. Unusual and very special.” Songs like “Yes We Can,” “Working in the Coal Mine,” “Get Out of My Life, Woman”—all gems. Allen’s songs and arrangements were unparalleled, and he often used one of the funkiest groups ever, the Meters, in his production, which to me was a stroke of genius.
After lunch, we ventured over to F&F Botanica so I could pick up some gris-gris—you never know when you might need some special powders or black salt to ward off bad customers or bad juju. This place wasn’t touristy or trendy at all. It was the real thing: rows and rows of authentic Haitian, French, and Spanish ceremonial remedies and potions. I stocked up on John the Conqueror root—gotta keep the mojo working— then grabbed some Saint David’s jinx remover, something Dr. John, the Night Tripper, had turned me on to. You might take some of these potions to be a joke, but as we shopped, Allen Toussaint never cracked a smile. In the Creole world, you didn’t underestimate the power of the unknown.
Right then, it hit me: I was really wishing Marty could have been along on this trip; the Crescent City, black magick— come on, what else do you need? Marty and I had been in overdrive in Telluride, and then he had gone straight down to Monument Valley. I knew he needed a break, but this trip was turning out to be so magical on so many levels that I felt sad I
couldn’t share it all with him. He would have loved it. I knew that everything, from the Staple Singers to the voodoo shop, would have run deep for him, as it did for me.
He had shared so much of his passion for movies with me, and it would have been so great for me to be able to share my love of this all-time-great music city with him. I knew he would just breathe it all in. A year and a half before, Marty had saved my life at one of my lowest points, taken me in when I had nowhere to go and wasn’t sure where to turn. In the time since, he had become my closest friend. I couldn’t look at him as anything less than a brother. A significant part of this was an understanding between me and him: We both got it. And I knew he would get the magic of this bayou town like I did.
Back at the hotel, Bob had helped settle Jake and Deborah’s disagreement, and soon it was time to head over to the Superdome. I hadn’t seen Ali fight in person since his first match with Smokin’ Joe Frazier, seven years before, when he got knocked down in the fifteenth round and lost for the first time in his career. He had come back to boxing after being expelled from the sport in 1967 for having refused to fight in the Vietnam War as a conscientious objector because of his Muslim faith. His expulsion had been thankfully overturned in 1971.
There was an enormous crowd over at the Superdome— more than 63,000 fans, the largest attendance ever for an indoor boxing match. As we made our way to our seats, Jake claimed this would be a defining fight for Ali, who had lost in a split decision to Spinks seven months earlier. If he didn’t redeem himself tonight, his career could be over.
I was already on the edge of my seat as Ali and Spinks entered the ring. The crowd was as fascinating as the fighters.
Back then, it seemed like a ritual that the most successful pimps and street hustlers would come to the biggest boxing events, and it was a sight to see. There was something quite beautiful and outrageous about the whole show, each guy trying to be more flamboyant than the next, all of them dressed to kill in their pink fur and diamond rings, proud girls on their arms pumping up their men.
I pointed a couple of dandies out to Jake, and he smiled. “Oh, yeah. They like to show up, and they like to show off.”
The bell rang.
Watching this rematch with one of the toughest middleweight boxers who had ever lived made it ten times more exciting. Round by round, blow by blow, Jake offered his insights and comments on what was going on inside the boxers and inside the ring—sharp observations. “This steel pole jab of Ali’s makes it so you can’t hardly get near him, he just keeps popping it straight out. He’s jabbing this pole in Spinks’s face constantly, but he’s always setting up the right hand.” And you’d see it—Ali’s jab, Spinks’s head popping back, all of it happening at lightning speed. As the rounds wore on, Ali’s speed, footwork, and technique were beginning to take their toll on Spinks. Jake noted that it was very unusual for a boxer to stand upright like Ali did, with his chin in the air, leaning back to evade punches. This is one of the first things a boxer is taught not to do, but Ali made it into an art form. Spinks began charging him in frustration, trying to get a shot in, but Ali would constantly tie him up and hold.
Jake shrugged. “It’s not exactly by the book, but it works.”
Deborah LaMotta watched the fighters exchange blows with a slight smirk and a keen eye. She understood exactly what was
going on. Bob asked Jake particular questions about stamina and leverage for power punches. The shows going on, both in the ring and beside me, were riveting. Every once in a while, Jake would rise slightly out of his seat and throw a short, lightningquick left hook or right uppercut, grunting—probably by instinct. He didn’t even seem to realize he was doing it.
This reminded me of a story Bob had told me about LaMotta. There was a bar in New York City where boxers would congregate—P.J. Clarke’s. Norman Mailer, the writer, would go there sometimes, too. One night, Mailer was standing at the bar beside Jake. He told Jake he had been sparring regularly himself and that he was getting very good.
Jake looked at him without making any response.
Mailer continued: “In fact, I think I could take you, Jake. Yeah, I believe I could take you.”
After a moment, Jake shook his head. “No, you couldn’t.”
Norman Mailer stood back. “What do you mean, no, I couldn’t?”
Again, Jake shook his head.
Norman raised his voice: “Why? Why couldn’t I take you?”
Jake answered, “Because you’re not queer enough.”
Norman rolled Jake’s comment around in his head. Was he referring to a boxer who had taken too many shots to the head, who, as they’d say, had “ended up on queer street”? Or was it some kind of disrespectful remark? Whatever it meant, Mailer, a man of words, had no comeback for that, and he smiled and acknowledged that Jake had already won the battle. It was just something unexpected and slightly poetic coming out of Jake LaMotta’s mouth.
After fifteen rounds of a total boxing clinic, Ali won a majority decision and became the first heavyweight fighter to win the championship three times. Jake and Bob talked about going back to congratulate Ali on his victory, but with the size of the Superdome and the crowd, it looked to be far too daunting a task.
After the fight, Bob had Galatoire’s booked for us to have a classic New Orleans meal—turtle soup, alligator tail cooked sublimely, catfish like you’ve never experienced. They gave us a table in the middle of the room, and various acquaintances, boxing aficionados, stopped by to say hello or comment on the fight. One of the people who came over was the actor Tony Curtis, whom Bob had worked with in The Last Tycoon. Bob introduced Tony around the table, and when he got to Deborah LaMotta, she smiled from ear to ear and let out a little sigh. It looked for a moment like Bob was going to invite Tony to join us, but he decided not to.
When Tony walked away, Jake shot a look at Deborah. “What was that? What was that all about?”
She frowned at him. “What was what? What are you talking about?”
“What was that look, that sound you made? What was that for?”
Deborah rolled her eyes. “Come on, Jake, don’t be ridiculous. All the girls my age used to have a little crush on Tony Curtis. He was so cute in all those movies. Why are you making a big deal about it?”
But Jake wasn’t letting it go. “Oh, so you think he’s cute? You got a crush on him? What if I crush his face? You think
you’ll still have a crush on him then?” He wasn’t yelling. He said all of it quietly, but with such thunder.
Deborah looked like she had been through this before, countless times.
I glanced at Harvey, who was sitting next to me. He closed his eyes and slowly shook his head as if to say, Bob’s gonna have to reel this one in.
“Hey, Jake, it’s nothing. Forget it,” Bob interjected. “He used to be a movie idol years ago. Maybe I coulda been a movie idol, too, but the girls never swooned over me like that.”
And just like that, it blew over. Jake let out a small chuckle and ate the rest of his meal in silence.
Later, Harvey and I met up with a couple of women back at the hotel for a drink. Somehow, though, we felt uninspired and had little desire to let the good times roll. Maybe we were burnt from an overdose of “the sweet science.” Maybe, for me, it was an extended hangover from the last eighteen months of nonstop work to finish The Last Waltz and from the crazy lifestyle Marty and I had been living: late nights that turned into late mornings, drug hazes that cleared up for only a little while before we plunged ourselves right back in. The toll was catching up, but we’d done a bang-up job avoiding the truth of what it was doing to us.
In the morning, the phone startled me awake. It was Marty’s assistant, Steve Prince. I quickly heard a serious tone in his voice. “I’m glad I tracked you down,” he said. “Marty’s been rushed to the hospital in very bad condition.”
My heart stopped. “Oh, god. What happened? What is it?”
“He had a very severe respiratory attack. He couldn’t breathe.” Steve’s voice cracked. “He’s in rough shape.”
I said, “Okay. I’ll head back to New York right away and come directly to the hospital. Tell Marty I’m on the way.” I felt panicked and guilty as I threw my clothes into my bag. My mind was racing. Man, if something terrible happens to Marty, I couldn’t stand it. Please let him be okay.
CHAPTER 2
February 1977
While I was gunning down Morning View Drive toward Zuma Beach, a striking vision appeared dead ahead: an enormous ball of orange fire drowning on the Pacific Ocean’s horizon. A perfect dying light. That, along with smoke from fires up the coast, had turned the clouds a hazy burnt umber.
Sundown—always a welcome sign for our crowd of nocturnal nomads. We had long sung the refrain to Ray Charles’s recording of “(Night Time Is) The Right Time,” with Margie Hendrix of the Raelettes crying out through the darkness, “Bay-beee! Bay-beee . . .”
As I drove along the coastline on Route 1, it felt as if I had seen this shot in a film noir, maybe with Sterling Hayden or Gloria Grahame. For a long time, I’d thought that some of my songs were influenced by film noir: the shadows, the misfits, the danger—that mood always connected for me. I don’t think I ever got over Howard Hawks’s The Big Sleep or Carol Reed’s The Third Man, with that zither music by Anton Karas. Movies had always played an outsize role in my life. Now I was in the middle of producing one. I was heading up to Martin Scorsese’s house off Mulholland Drive in Beverly Hills to discuss what was needed to complete our work on The Last Waltz, the movie of the concert we’d performed on November 25, 1976.
As I veered off the Pacific Coast Highway and onto Malibu Canyon’s serpentine roadway, suddenly something snapped, like I’d been hit with a jolt of electricity. Then, silence—dead
silence, as if I had dropped thousands of feet in a plane, but more extreme. I had been plunged into a void.
I shook my head, trying to undo the blockage. I turned the volume control on the radio up to the max. It should have been deafening, but I heard nothing. My heart was pounding. I thought maybe I should pull over, but I couldn’t. I should stop, but I can’t. Instead, something made me want to drive faster. Why can’t I hear anything? What the hell was happening?
The road looked darker than I’d ever seen it before. The high beams of my ragtop struggled to light the way. I began to break out in a panicked sweat as I ripped into one of the canyon tunnels. The lights in its interior looked muted. I leaned on the horn as I would do sometimes with my kids when we drove through a tunnel, to hear the echo. No sound came back. This was freaking me out. Was I having a stroke? A breakdown? Was I losing my damn mind?
A week earlier, Dominique, my wife of almost ten years, had demanded that I move out of our house in the Malibu Colony, where we lived with our three kids. She said her needs were being overshadowed by my work and my fame. There wasn’t anything in particular I had done. It was more that my job of writing songs and performing them, and now producing a movie, was garnering too much of my attention. It had left her feeling out in the cold.
I was shocked, speechless. But I knew a dark cloud had been hanging over our relationship, and I didn’t know how to
blow it away. We had been withholding too much, talking past each other. I felt like asking, Am I incapable of sharing what I do, or what I’m doing in the world? Is there something I’m not bringing Dominique into because I don’t know how? We would talk, but I wasn’t able to share what I felt inside. And I suspect that kept her from sharing things in a way I could understand. What I heard from her sounded like complaining, but that wasn’t it—she was describing something I couldn’t hear or didn’t want to. I could sense that somewhere inside me was a profound shortcoming, but I couldn’t name it, and I didn’t know how to fix it. The truth was, I had always prioritized my work. It’s what I knew I had to do and where I found my deepest value, but getting the balance right wasn’t easy, and what I was giving Dominique wasn’t enough.
Our lifestyle—where drugs and alcohol had become as common as peanut butter and jam—didn’t help. Everyone we knew was getting high on something. Dominique had developed a particular fondness for vodka. It took the edge off, she said; it helped her feel fun and carefree. But her drinking had a terrible cost, a cost I had already seen with my First Nations kin from the rez and with my bandmate Richard Manuel, whose demons had been a nightmare that left him and us helpless for years. By then, drink had become a raw nerve for me. I drank, smoked weed, and did some coke and was in no position to be scolding anybody, but that was exactly what I had been doing with my dear Dominique.
There was more. Quite calmly, she explained that someone had come into her life who had an understanding and acceptance of her that I didn’t. I took that to mean someone who
just wanted to have a good time. I had burned out on this version of a good time. Even with my past experience, I wasn’t equipped to handle it, didn’t want to recognize the problem for what it was or how I might have contributed to it. But deep down, I knew it wasn’t her fault alone.
Dominique was the love of my life, and my kids, Alexandra, Delphine, and Sebastian, were the most precious things in the whole world to me. I felt devastated, hurt, angry, and lost all at the same time. My reaction turned cold. All I wanted to do was escape.
I packed my bag and moved into a room at the far end of Shangri-La Ranch, the Band’s recording studio, overlooking Zuma Beach. There were three rooms, like a little motel, attached to the end of the main house that held the studio. Years earlier, Shangri-La had been a bordello for ranch hands in the area. Later, episodes of the TV show Mister Ed were shot there. When we took it over and turned it into our clubhouse studio, it became a musical haven. So many magical things had happened within its walls: We had recorded our album Northern Lights–Southern Cross and mixed Before the Flood, the album of the 1974 Band/Bob Dylan tour. We had also put together a collection of The Basement Tapes. Eric Clapton had made an album there, and I had produced Neil Diamond’s Beautiful Noise. Now I was living there.
Larry Samuels, the Band’s tour manager, who ran the Shangri-La studio, said he would create a doorway between the room I was staying in and the next one, so I would have a sitting area and it would feel more spacious and open. Some workmen smashed an opening into the wall, but it took weeks to put a door in. I sat there in the dark one night, staring
