45 f
book that inspired his Oscar-nominated Dead Man Walking movie, religion and the theory that three of the gospels were suppressed by early Christians. Time To Kill came out of a chance meeting in a Colorado bar with a war veteran consumed by shame after acci- dentally killing some kids in Iraq – an apposite topic given Robbins’ high profile opposition to the invasion of Iraq, incurring the wrath of the establishment as a result.
“They tried to intimidate everyone into silence whenever any- body spoke out. Whether it was me or a weapons inspector or a high-ranking government official they would demonise them and try to shut them up. I spoke out against it whenever I was asked my opinion and they kept me off most television shows. But the bottom line was it was all an illusion. They didn’t have the num- bers or the support and they had to create a false image of sup- port. I discovered it was an illusion when they jumped down my throat and called me a traitor and a terrorist supporter, but when I went out on the street next day taking my kids to school in New York City, all I heard was ‘Keep going, we’re behind you, don’t lis- ten to them, we need you to speak because we don’t have a voice’. They were able to create an illusion of support because the media was basically paying lip service to every bit of propaganda they wanted to release. But nobody tried to kill me. Nobody put me in a Gulag. It’s a free society. The only problem is if you don’t use your freedom of speech…”
This itself develops into an involved debate about the power
of art to effect change. “It always does because it changes people. It changes the heart, it changes the soul. That’s why it is feared so much. The Nazis hated art. At least, any art that was saying any- thing… Max Beckmann, George Grosz, Bertolt Brecht… if you can move people it’s far more effective than any politician’s speech… When we did Dead Man Walking it changed the debate on the death penalty.”
Lightning Calls, his touching tribute to Nelson Mandela, elicits an entertaining anecdote about dining with Mandela and their discussions in the wake of the movie Catch A Fire, set in apartheid- era South Africa. (“When I got invited to have lunch with Nelson Mandela I figured it was going to be one of these big banquets, a fundraiser with 300 people and maybe I’d get to shake his hand. But it really was lunch with Nelson Mandela…”)
couple of years ago he hit what he candidly calls his mid-life crisis (he seriously contemplated calling the record The Midlife Crisis Album). The global economy was in meltdown, he lost a ton of money on an abort- ed movie he was making in Oregon and his long-term partnership with Susan Sarandon was about to collapse. “One night in Oregon I was staring down the devil and looking into the future and asked myself what I would most regret not doing were it all to fall apart. And I realised I had all these notebooks full of lyrics and chord structures but I was the only one who knew the tunes. So the next day I went back to New York, booked a studio and recorded 15 songs with my guitar, just so they’d be documented in some way. Then I put it aside and went to work on another script and licked my wounds and tried to fig- ure the way forward. A couple of months later I saw the CD and put it on and it sounded pretty good. So I called Hal Willner, who’s a friend of mine, and said ‘I need you to be honest with me – don’t be kind – tell me if it’s not any good’. But he said ‘Yes there’s an album there and I have the perfect band for you…’”
A
The band Willner had in mind were the group of musicians (including the redoubtable Kate St John) he’d assembled for the splendid Pirates Of The Caribbean offshoot shanties album Rogues Gallery. Next thing he knew, Robbins was in Dublin appearing on stage with the Rogues Gallery show and, in two spare days between dates in Gateshead and London, they were recording the Tim Robbins album together. Throw in a guest spot from Joan As Policewoman, the odd hurdy-gurdy, cor anglais, harmonium and musical saw and you have a distinctively intense album that draws palpable influence from many of his heroes, including Tom Waits, Patti Smith, Bruce Springsteen, Leonard Cohen, Dylan, Brecht/ Weill, X and, indeed, Woody Guthrie. The circle was even complet- ed for Robbins last year when his son Miles – who now has his own band The Tangents – went on stage with him, Rufus and Martha Wainwright and the McGarrigle sisters to take a verse each of Michael Row The Boat Ashore at Pete Seeger’s 90th birthday con- cert at Madison Square Garden.
And now, while he’s not embarking on a wholesale career change exactly, he’s certainly planning to give singing a serious shot with a series of live dates through the autumn. “We’ll see how it goes. If people don’t throw tomatoes I might want to do it for a while. I’d encourage people to throw lettuce instead because it hurts less...”
Take cover, here comes that earth-shuddering laugh again… F
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