We\u2019ve all had moments like that with a friend, when you\u2019re up too late and wasted, then you hear the perfect song. For three or four minutes there\u2019s no BBC documentary crew or promotional obligations in the morning or sunlight creeping along the horizon, it\u2019s just you and your buddy being transported by a beautiful piece of music. (And music doesn\u2019t get much more beautiful than \u201cTupelo Honey.\u201d) In his wonderful remembrance<\/a> of Roberston for Rolling Stone<\/em>, Scorsese wrote that when the sun was coming up, \u201cThe only thing left to do was to put on \u2018Tupelo Honey.\u2019 That\u2019s what always happened. Van and \u2018Tupelo Honey.\u2019 It was sort of our sign off.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Robertson and Scorsese had a lot of nights like that, many of them recounted in Robertson\u2019s posthumously published Insomnia<\/em>. During post-production on The Last Waltz<\/em>, the musician was separated from his wife Dominique and sleeping in The Band\u2019s Shangri-La studio. He wound up moving in with Scorsese, whose second wife Julia Cameron had recently left with their daughter Domenica. The rock star and the movie director became what Robertson describes as a \u201cwhacked out new version of The Odd Couple<\/em>\u201d for a lost weekend that lasted about a year and a half. The two famously soundproofed the Beverly Hills house and installed blackout shades, staying up until all hours every night partying, listening to music and watching old movies. Robertson says, \u201cWe were, as the Indians say, walking in the beauty way.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Insomnia<\/em> is a gentlemanly tour of late-\u201870s Southern California decadence, full of eyebrow-raising anecdotes and delicious name drops. But mostly it\u2019s a love story about two best friends who not-so-secretly want to be each other. Scorsese has always shot and cut his movies like a frustrated musician, while Robertson\u2019s richly cinematic songs for The Band were written and \u201ccast\u201d with roles for the group\u2019s three singers. The two are desperately hungry to learn more about each other\u2019s disciplines, and both are natural born curators. One of the things that comes through most powerfully in the book is the thrill of turning a pal on to something you love that you know they\u2019re gonna dig. Come for the coke binges and gorgeous gals, stay for the lengthy digressions about Sam Fuller and the Staple Singers.<\/p>\n\n\n Robertson writes about everything in a breezy, appreciative tone. He\u2019s constantly marveling at all the great artists in their orbit and the beautiful women who seem so eager to bed down with him, euphemizing the ubiquitous drugs as \u201cparty favors\u201d or \u201ca little pick me up.\u201d Maybe it\u2019s because five decades have passed, or because Robbie wound up reconciling with his wife shortly thereafter, but there\u2019s an almost comical disconnect between Robertson\u2019s laid-back, groovy recollections and what a tumultuous time his roommate is clearly having. The disastrous receptions of New York, New York<\/em> and the director\u2019s ill-fated Broadway musical The Act<\/em> are mentioned only in passing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We get little hints of the darkness roiling beneath, like a Scorsese chasing \u201ca brunette I did not know\u201d down the driveway wearing only his pajama tops, or Marty and his then-lover Liza Minnelli destroying a hotel room during a spat. Roberston describes a wine bottle they\u2019d smashed against the ceiling leaving red liquid dripping from the chandelier like \u201csomething out of Visconti.\u201d The detail that sticks with me most is Scorsese trying to pay at a restaurant with bills stained with blood because they\u2019d been up his nose the night before. At one point, a doctor tells them to stop doing so much coke because it\u2019s bad for the septum, and suggests using methamphetamines instead, like he does. (\u201c\u201970s medicine,\u201d Roberston muses.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n Special guest stars abound, like the avuncular Francis Ford Coppola, who jerry-rigs one of Scorsese\u2019s 16mm projectors to stir the spaghetti sauce he\u2019s been cooking while they all go out to a screening of The Last Waltz<\/em>. Later he\u2019ll hire a personal chef for the boys, as their extracurricular activities have left them looking a little emaciated in his eyes. Insomnia<\/em> takes place in a party-hopping Hollywood where you can say goodnight to Jack Nicholson at one gathering, then when you arrive at your next destination find he\u2019s already there. (If anyone could be at multiple parties at once, it\u2019s Jack.) The author diagnoses his own prodigious womanizing as something of a bad habit, but surmises \u201cIt can\u2019t be worse for me than smoking cigarettes.\u201d Roberston puts up some pretty impressive stats during the book, but one of the comic highlights is how badly he strikes out with Sophia Loren.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The party finally ended when Scorsese nearly died, hemorrhaging so much that blood was reportedly gushing from every orifice in his head, though Roberston characteristically sidesteps such gory details. The director would eventually recover and turn this long, dark night of the soul into Raging Bull<\/em>, while the two friends continued to collaborate on soundtracks up through 2023\u2019s Killers of the Flower Moon<\/em>, though always going home to separate residences. Of visiting Scorsese in the hospital, Roberston writes, \u201cI knew then, looking into Marty\u2019s eyes, that the safest place for me was at home with my wife and kids. And the safest place for Marty was not living with me.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Insomnia” is on bookshelves now<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/rr-last-waltz-1024x552.jpeg\")
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