“Like Touring with Shakespeare”: Longtime Agent Steve Martin Remembers Robert Hunter
photo credit: Les Kippel
Steve Martin is the Executive Vice President, World Wide Concerts at Agency for the Performing Arts. In 1979, he began his career as a music promoter, working with artists such as Miles Davis, Muddy Waters and Tom Waits. He shifted gears to become a booking agent three years later and, after the departure of a colleague, Martin started working with Robert Hunter, who would remain a client for the remainder of his life.
Since Robert performed so infrequently, how would you describe your relationship over the years?
He was very comfortable in his own skin. He was very bright and we shared a love of science fiction and mysteries. We read a lot of the same people. Sometimes we would just talk about what we were reading and things like that.
Robert liked the concept of touring more than the reality of touring. What most people don’t know is that Robert rehearsed constantly. He rehearsed all the time as if he was going to go out on the road in three months, when in reality it would be three years. When I started working with him, it took me a few conversations to realize this isn’t a rock-and-roll guy. This is a writer. He comes from a completely different point of view as a literary person, as a poet and as a writer.
He didn’t really want a band, either. He would have a band, occasionally with Zero, but in later years I would say, “Why don’t we put together a band with Jack [Casady], Jorma [Kaukonen] and a drummer? We can have one of the great San Francisco bands.” He would say, “That’s a great idea,” and then not want to do anything about it, even though he had enormous respect for Jack and Jorma.
In the mid-‘80s Robert hadn’t played in a bit and asked me if I would go out on the road with him. I told him I’d be happy to. So we met in Colorado and did a couple shows there and then went on to Chicago where a friend of mine asked, “What’s it like touring with Robert?” I said, “It’s fascinating because he’s not a hard drinking, partying guy. And he’s so smart and he’s funnier than people think, but he doesn’t suffer fools gladly. I can only imagine if this was a different time and place, it’d be like touring with Shakespeare.”
In the latter stages of his career he mostly performed outside the Bay Area. Was this by his design?
Hardly Strictly Bluegrass had a standing offer for him to play for a very respectable fee. Year after year and he’d pass. Then after seven or eight times, he said, “Do you think I should do it?”
I said, “Bob, from my point of view, you finish lunch, you drive across the bridge, you spend two lovely hours at Golden Gate Park, you play for about 45 minutes, you’re home for dinner. You build an extension on the house if you want.” [Laughs.]
He would laugh at that, then he’d go, “Yeah, but I like my anonymity around San Francisco. I like being able to go around and really nobody bothers me.”
And I said, “I completely understand that. And if you ever left the house, I’d understand that a lot more.” [Laughs.] I understood why he didn’t like to leave the house. The love of his life was there as well as his children and his grandchildren. He could write, play and read. Everything he needed was right at home.
Although he played limited live dates, he really seemed to be hitting his stride in recent years.
He really connected with City Winery. He liked the experience. Ironically, his wife Maureen and I both felt that the last shows that he ever did at City Winery were the best shows he ever played— just in terms of his comfort, his confidence, his sense of humor. And the setlists were remarkable. He hadn’t played “Touch of Grey” for years. I would kind of bug him about it. I’d say, “Bob, it’s one of your biggest songs.”
And he’d go, “Yeah, I know, but I got other stuff I want to say.” Then, I would explain that, when people come to see him, they also want to hear their memories—that feeling of their first girlfriend—when they listen to “Ripple” or “Deal” or another song. I explained that they were emotionally attached to these songs.
Then he said, “Ahh, well that’s interesting. I hadn’t thought of it that way… But I don’t want to be a Grateful Dead jukebox.”
And I told him, “Bob, you wrote the songs. You’re not a Grateful Dead jukebox. People go see Paul McCartney, and don’t think he’s a Beatles jukebox. He wrote the songs.”
I think a little bit of that sunk in because during those last shows he sang more Grateful Dead songs than he had in a long time and people loved it. But it was only in that last year or so that he would start doing “Touch of Grey.” Then, at one of those shows [July 23, 2014], he not only did “Touch of Grey,” but he also did Bruce Springsteen’s “Born to Run.” After the show, I said to Maureen: “If you bet me $10,000 he would do ‘Touch of Grey’ and ‘Born to Run’ tonight, I would have taken that bet in a heartbeat.”
So I said to Bob, “Where’d you pull that out of?”
And he answered, “I just liked the song so I thought I’d sing some of it.”
Unfortunately, he got sick after that, but he kept rehearsing and he kept thinking he was going to play. Once or twice I held some dates that we just couldn’t get around to.
He was an interesting guy and he represented so much to me because he was really my first client.
This article originally appeared in the December 2019 issue of Relix. For more features, interviews, album reviews and more subscribe below.