{"id":458531,"date":"2025-12-19T20:56:38","date_gmt":"2025-12-19T20:56:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/458531\/"},"modified":"2025-12-19T20:56:38","modified_gmt":"2025-12-19T20:56:38","slug":"the-story-behind-the-first-song-robbie-robertson-wrote-with-eric-clapton-for-a-1980s-martin-scorsese-classic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/458531\/","title":{"rendered":"The Story Behind the First Song Robbie Robertson Wrote with Eric Clapton for a 1980s Martin Scorsese Classic"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nearly a decade before The Band<\/a> played their final concert, immortalized in Martin Scorsese\u2019s 1978 film,\u00a0The Last Waltz, Eric Clapton<\/a> made his way to Woodstock in 1969, intent on asking if he could join the band. Though he never worked up the nerve to ask, Clapton and the Band\u2019s Robbie Robertson<\/a> became lifelong friends and continued to collaborate<\/a> on projects from the mid-1970s through Robertson\u2019s 2011 solo album\u00a0How to Become a Clairvoyant,\u00a0and their live performances together in the years that followed.<\/p>\n

All five members of The Band first appeared on Clapton\u2019s fourth solo album,\u00a0No Reason to Cry, from 1976, which included a co-write with Rick Danko, \u201cAll Our Past Times.\u201d Nearly two decades later, Clapton would also induct The Band into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1994.<\/p>\n

\u2018The Color of Money\u2019<\/p>\n

In 1986, as Robertson started working on his solo debut, a self-titled album\u2014featuring former bandmates the Band\u2019s Rick Danko<\/a> and Garth Hudson, along with\u00a0Peter Gabriel<\/a>, U2, and more\u2014he was also scoring friend Martin Scorsese\u2019s 1986 film,\u00a0The Color of Money, following a pool hustler, Eddie Felson (Paul Newman), who returns to the game and takes on a prot\u00e9g\u00e9, Vincent Lauria, played by Tom Cruise.<\/p>\n

Along with B.B. King,\u00a0Robert Palmer,\u00a0Willie Dixon, Don Henley, Warren Zevon, and\u00a0Mark Knopfler, Robertson also recorded two tracks on the soundtrack, \u201cModern Blues\u201d and \u201cThe Main Title,\u201d and co-wrote another with Clapton. <\/p>\n

Written by Clapton and Robertson, \u201cIt\u2019s in the Way That You Use It\u201d\u00a0is a story about the fleeting nature of money, how it comes and goes.<\/p>\n

[RELATED: 4 Songs You Didn\u2019t Know The Band\u2019s Robbie Robertson Wrote for Other Artists]<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

It\u2019s in the way that you use it
It comes and it goes
It\u2019s in the way that you use it
Boy, don\u2019t you know<\/p>\n

And if you lie you will lose it
Feelings will show
So don\u2019t you ever abuse it
Don\u2019t let it go<\/p>\n

Nobody\u2019s right until somebody\u2019s wrong
Nobody\u2019s weak until somebody\u2019s strong
No one gets lucky until luck comes along
Nobody\u2019s lonely until somebody\u2019s gone<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve seen dark skies, never like this
Walked on some thin ice, never like this
I\u2019ve told you white lies, never like this
Looked into true eyes, never like this<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s in the Way That You Use It\u201d was later released on Clapton\u2019s 10th album,\u00a0August,\u00a0produced mostly by\u00a0Phil Collins<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Clapton and Robertson\u2019s Later Collaborations<\/p>\n

More than 20 years after writing \u201cIt\u2019s in the Way That You Use It,\u201d Robertson and Clapton co-wrote two more songs together\u2014\u201dFear of Falling\u201d and \u201cWon\u2019t Be Back\u201d\u2014for Robertson\u2019s fifth solo album,\u00a0How to Become a Clairvoyant, in 2011,\u00a0featuring a collection of special guests, including Rage Against the Machine\u2019s Tom Morello and Trent Reznor. <\/p>\n

\u201cWhen people underestimate what he [Robertson] does, they want to try doing it,\u201d Clapton shared<\/a> shortly after Robertson\u2019s death in 2023. \u201cThe intros to songs, the little things that sound like they\u2019re scrappy and off the cuff, which is part of his unique attractiveness to me. He sounds like he\u2019s only just now working out that this will work.\u201d<\/p>\n

Clapton continued, \u201cI\u2019m sure it\u2019s a lot more crafted out than that. I know him well enough to know he was really precise about what he did. It\u2019s so difficult to recreate that kind of on-the-edge of expression.\u201d<\/p>\n

Photo: Robbie Robertson, 1994 (Bob Berg\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Nearly a decade before The Band played their final concert, immortalized in Martin Scorsese\u2019s 1978 film,\u00a0The Last Waltz,…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":458532,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[171,46908,975,209645,209646,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-458531","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-eric-clapton","10":"tag-music","11":"tag-robbie-robertson","12":"tag-the-band","13":"tag-united-states","14":"tag-unitedstates","15":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115748233783634075","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/458531","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=458531"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/458531\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/458532"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=458531"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=458531"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=458531"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}