– by Mike Mettler

v Message From Big Pink: Onetime leader of The Band Robbie Robertson (67) namechecks our man Jimi in the appropriately titled “Axman,” a track on his first solo album in over a decade, How To Become Clairvoyant (Bella Coola/429 Records). “On that song, I refer to him as I first knew him – Jimmy James,” Robertson explained. In a phone conversation from his Los Angeles studio this past January, Robbie detailed that initial meeting plus revealed some key advice he gave the budding musician (but it wasn’t about playing guitar).

Robbie Robertson: When I first met him, he introduced himself to me as Jimmy James, and he was playing with a friend of mine whom I had also worked with, John Hammond, Jr. I was in New York, and he asked me to come down to this club he was playing in The Village, the Café A Go-Go.

So I went down and I saw them, and Jimmy James played the guitar behind his head, behind his back, with his teeth, all that stuff. Later on we were hanging out, and for a while there we spent some time talking about music and guitars and all kinds of shit. I talked to him about guitar players I had seen play early on with Big Jay McNeely’s band. [McNeely (84), a tenor sax player, is known as the King of the Honking Tenor Sax.] The guy in his band played the guitar behind his head and with his teeth.

And he said, “They’re from Seattle, and I’m from Seattle. That’s where I got this idea from, from this guitar player.” I didn’t know his name, but I think Jimmy did know it. [Likely it was Wendell Johnson, who can be heard on Big Jay McNeely: Live In Birdland (Collector’s Choice), recorded in Seattle in 1957.]

So when we were hanging out in The Village the next few weeks, he only wanted to talk about songwriting. He was trying to figure out if he had the ability to write songs. Because I was playing with Bob Dylan then, he thought I might know something about the secrets of songwriting. [chuckles] He said, “I know how to play guitar,” and he was a little bit embarrassed about his singing voice. But he thought, “If I could write good songs, then it wouldn’t matter as much about my singing voice.” He was extremely modest and down to earth about talking about these kinds of things.

So I gave him some songwriting experiences I had and some things that Bob did, and he was intrigued by any secrets of the game he could pick up. I was really interested in him being such an incredible student at that time, what he was going after. I very much related to that, because I was like a student too – I was only in my early twenties then, I could afford to be in the learning process. We shared some great times together, just concentrating on the world of songwriting.

UniVibes: So did he succeed, in your mind?

RR: All I can say is that I think he tried to use his imagination and not follow anyone. One of the things I told him was, “If everybody is writing about this particular thing, then I would not go in that particular direction because it’s crowded in there. Look, to the best of your ability, for the story and the experiences that you can tell the best that’s not what people are writing these days. I’d completely avoid the obvious.” And he said, “Yeah, man!”

The first time we’d talked about this, I told him, “You need to get a little notepad, and you need to write down things so you don’t forget them, because if they get away, they’re gone forever.” And the next time I saw him, he had the notepad. So when I told him about avoiding the obvious, he took out the notepad and wrote it down. [chuckles]

UV: I’d say it sounds like you took your own advice as well.

RR: Well, you know, hopefully!

*** From UniVibes issue #63 ***