Posts Tagged ‘Rick Danko’

POP LIFE: THE FULL EPISODE WITH ROBBIE ROBERTSON AND WESLEY WILLIAMS.

Robbie Robertson passed away today at the age of 81. Here is my “Pop Life” interview with him from September of 2019.

On the season five opener of “Pop Life” the panel, Kelsey Miller, author of “I’ll Be There For You: The One About Friends,” Steve Jordan, founder and Executive Director of the Polaris Music Prize and Wesley Williams (aka Maestro Fresh Wes), the “godfather of Canadian hip hop,” discuss how to define a disruptor in the arts and what it means to be a game changer. Then legendary musician Robbie Robertson talks about his earliest musical inspirations, how he was booed by Bob Dylan’s audience and how he once almost turned to a life of crime when he couldn’t get gigs.

Watch the whole thing HERE!

Film critic and pop culture historian Richard Crouse shares a toast with celebrity guests and entertainment pundits every week on CTV News Channel’s talk show POP LIFE.

Featuring in-depth discussion and debate on pop culture and modern life, POP LIFE features sit-down interviews with celebrities from across the entertainment world, including rock legends Sting, Meat Loaf and Robbie Robertson, musicians Josh Groban, Shania Twain and superstar jazz pianist Diana Krall, You Tube superstar Gigi Gorgeous, comedian Ken Jeong, writer Fran Lebowitz, stand-up comedian and CNN host W. Kamau Bell, actors Danny DeVito and Jay Baruchel, celebrity chefs Bobby Flay, Gail Simmons and Nigella Lawson, and many more.

POP LIFE: THE PANEL ON DISRUPTIONS and innovators in entertainment.

On the season five opener of “Pop Life” the panel, Kelsey Miller, author of “I’ll Be There For You: The One About Friends,” Steve Jordan, founder and Executive Director of the Polaris Music Prize and Wesley Williams (aka Maestro Fresh Wes), the “godfather of Canadian hip hop,” discuss how to define a disruptor in the arts and what it is like to be a game changer.

“Coming out of Toronto, you know, we knew anything we did was going to be groundbreaking,” says Wes Williams on his influential hit “Let Your Backbone Slide,” “within the parameters of Toronto and within the parameters of hip hop which was at our time was Toronto, New York City, New Jersey and then there was a guy named Ice-T on the west coast. That was it really, so we thought within our parameters we thought whoever comes out with a hit first is going to be the one. I remember the first day I heard my song played in the club. Oh my goodness. They mixed it in with Heavy D and The Boyz. Me my man Farley Flex, we just jumped around the club like like idiots because we finally reached the final destination. We were considered innovators and we were disrupting what was known at the time.”

Watch the whole thing HERE!

Film critic and pop culture historian Richard Crouse shares a toast with celebrity guests and entertainment pundits every week on CTV News Channel’s talk show POP LIFE.

Featuring in-depth discussion and debate on pop culture and modern life, POP LIFE features sit-down interviews with celebrities from across the entertainment world, including rock legends Sting, Meat Loaf and Robbie Robertson, musicians Josh Groban, Shania Twain and superstar jazz pianist Diana Krall, You Tube superstar Gigi Gorgeous, comedian Ken Jeong, writer Fran Lebowitz, stand-up comedian and CNN host W. Kamau Bell, actors Danny DeVito and Jay Baruchel, celebrity chefs Bobby Flay, Gail Simmons and Nigella Lawson, and many more.

POP LIFE: ROBBIE ROBERTSON ON THE EARLY DAYS WITH THE BAND AND MORE!

This week on the season five opener of “Pop Life” legendary musician Robbie Robertson talks about his earliest musical inspirations, how he was booed by Bob Dylan’s audience and how he once almost turned to a life of crime when he couldn’t get gigs.

“It was a revelation to me,” Robertson says of visiting his relatives on the Six Nations Reserve, “because I grew up between Toronto and Six Nations, and when we would go to Six Nations it seemed to me as a young kid that everybody played an instrument or sang or danced. I thought, ‘I just have to join this club.'”

Watch the whole thing HERE!

Film critic and pop culture historian Richard Crouse shares a toast with celebrity guests and entertainment pundits every week on CTV News Channel’s talk show POP LIFE.

Featuring in-depth discussion and debate on pop culture and modern life, POP LIFE features sit-down interviews with celebrities from across the entertainment world, including rock legends Sting, Meat Loaf and Robbie Robertson, musicians Josh Groban, Shania Twain and superstar jazz pianist Diana Krall, You Tube superstar Gigi Gorgeous, comedian Ken Jeong, writer Fran Lebowitz, stand-up comedian and CNN host W. Kamau Bell, actors Danny DeVito and Jay Baruchel, celebrity chefs Bobby Flay, Gail Simmons and Nigella Lawson, and many more.

POP LIFE: THE FIRST SHOW OF SEASON 5 WITH ROBBIE ROBERTSON!

The first episode of season five of “Pop Life,” featuring an in-depth interview with Robbie Robertson, airs Saturday September 28, 2019 (8:30 pm on CTV NewsChannel, midnight on CTV). The legendary solo artist and leader of The Band talks about finding a love of music on the 6th Nations reservation where his mother was raised, going electric with Bob Dylan, where the idea for the song “The Weight” came from and much more.

Film critic and pop culture historian Richard Crouse shares a toast with celebrity guests and entertainment pundits every week on CTV News Channel’s all-new talk show POP LIFE.

Featuring in-depth discussion and debate on pop culture and modern life, POP LIFE features sit-down interviews with celebrities from across the entertainment world, including rock legends Sting and Meat Loaf, musicians Josh Groban and Sarah Brightman, comedian Ken Jeong, writer Fran Lebowitz, superstar jazz musician Diana Krall, stand-up comedian and CNN host W. Kamau Bell, actors Danny DeVito and Jay Baruchel, celebrity chefs Bobby Flay and Nigella Lawson, and many more.

RICHARD’S CTV NEWSCHANNEL WEEKEND MOVIE REVIEWS FOR SEPT 20.

Richard sits in on the CTV NewsChannel with news anchor Marcia MacMillan to have a look at the weekend’s big releases including the big screen adaptation of “Downtown Abbey,” Brad Pitt’s trip into outer reaches of space and his own psyche in “Ad Astra” and the music doc “Once Were Brothers: Robbie Robertson and The Band.”

Watch the whole thing HERE!

CFRA IN OTTAWA: THE BILL CARROLL MORNING SHOW MOVIE REVIEWS!

Richard has a look at the new movies coming to theatres, including the big screen adaptation of “Downtown Abbey,” the punk rock genre film “Riot Girls,” Brad Pitt’s trip into outer reaches of space and his own psyche in “Ad Astra” and the music doc “Once Were Brothers: Robbie Robertson and the Band.”

Listen to the whole thing HERE!

ONCE WERE BROTHERS: ROBBIE ROBERTSON AND THE BAND: 4 STARS. “remarkable music.”

As the title suggests “Once Were Brothers: Robbie Robertson and the Band” is a study of a brotherhood that changed the way music was made in the 1970s and 80s.

The documentary, inspired by Robertson’s 2016 memoir “Testimony,” produced by the powerhouse duo of Ron Howard and Brain Grazer and directed by Daniel Roher, details the guitarist’s early life as the son of Mohawk mother Dolly and “Hebrew gangster” father named Alexander Klegerman who died before he was born. An interest in music and storytelling came from visiting his relatives on the Six Nations Reserve, inspiring him to pick up a guitar and express himself.

His “personal big bang” came with the discovery of rock and roll. An even bigger bang came when the teenaged Robertson saw Rompin’ Ronnie Hawkins, a flamboyant, ex-pat Southern American rock-a-billy musician playing in Toronto. The music, a frenetic blend of rock and roll and hopped-up country music, expertly played by a band that included drummer Levon Helm, spoke to Robertson, revealing an aural passageway to a world he had only ever read about. Eventually, at age sixteen, he joined the band, a move that set on the path to helping to take Bob Dylan electric, and form a band that melded Hank Williams, Muddy Waters with roots music into something that had never been heard before. When they played together, talking head and fan Bruce Springsteen says, “something happened that couldn’t happen on their own. Something miraculous.”

The Band, Canadian multi-instrumentalists and singers Rick Danko, Richard Manuel and keyboardist Garth Hudson alongside Robbie Robertson and Helm, made classic albums like “Music from Big Pink,” “The Band” and “Stage Fright,” and formed a logical, if not biological, musical family. “I was an only child so this brotherhood was so powerful,” says Robertson. But like all families there were problems. Unbridled creativity and stardom led to drug abuse and in 1976, after sixteen years together and documenting their final star-studded concert in the Martin Scorsese-directed “The Last Waltz,” they went their separate ways. Robertson says the idea was, “to get back together and make music like never before… everyone just forgot to come back.”

This is Robertson’s documentary. Helm, Danko and Manuel are all gone, while Hudson appears only in archival clips so the film has the feeling of a requiem for a friendship and brotherhood lost. Other than a visit to Helm’s deathbed, Robertson hadn’t spoken to his old bandmate in years. The film chalks up the skism in their relationship to drugs, jealousy and fighting the way only people who love one another can.

With a deep, sonorous voice that makes you wish he would narrate every documentary made from now on, Robertson eloquently shares his story, sometimes funny—having a hypnotist on stage at the Fillmore West to help him overcome nerves—and sometimes heartfelt—”I still loved him but something was broken,” he says of his relationship with Helm. “It was like glass. Hard to put back together.”—in a way that doesn’t lay blame, simply present his side of a much-debated rock ‘n roll feud.

Adding colour to the story are testimonials from Springsteen, Eric Clapton, ex-wife Dominique Robertson and, best of all, Hawkins who livens things up with his reminisces. “There was enough flour and sugar in that to make us sneeze biscuits,” he says of the cocaine backstage at “The Last Waltz.”

The final word on The Band is, of course, the music they left behind. Their musical partnership may have ended amid acrimony but “Once Were Brothers: Robbie Robertson and the Band” understands that the lasting legacy is in the songs. Music appears throughout but Roher bookends the film with remarkable performances. Early on we see the guys, crammed into a small room, so closely packed they’re almost sitting on top of one another, rip through a version of “Up on Cripple Creek” so transcendent it could only be played by musicians connecting on a spiritual level. Roher finishes things off with footage from “The Last Waltz” that showcases the band in all their ragged glory proving that in the end, it’s the music that matters.

CJAD IN MONTREAL: THE ANDREW CARTER SHOW WITH RICHARD CROUSE ON MOVIES!

Richard sits in on the CJAD Montreal morning show with host Andrew Carter to talk the new movies coming to theatres including the big screen adaptation of “Downtown Abbey,” Brad Pitt’s trip into outer reaches of space and his own psyche in “Ad Astra” and the music doc “Once Were Brothers: Robbie Robertson and the Band.”

Listen to the whole thing HERE!