The Story Behind the First Song Robbie Robertson Wrote with Eric Clapton for a 1980s Martin Scorsese Classic

Nearly a decade before The Band played their final concert, immortalized in Martin Scorsese’s 1978 film, The Last Waltz, Eric Clapton 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’s Robbie Robertson became lifelong friends and continued to collaborate on projects from the mid-1970s through Robertson’s 2011 solo album How to Become a Clairvoyant, and their live performances together in the years that followed.

All five members of The Band first appeared on Clapton’s fourth solo album, No Reason to Cry, from 1976, which included a co-write with Rick Danko, “All Our Past Times.” Nearly two decades later, Clapton would also induct The Band into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1994.

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‘The Color of Money’

In 1986, as Robertson started working on his solo debut, a self-titled album—featuring former bandmates the Band’s Rick Danko and Garth Hudson, along with Peter Gabriel, U2, and more—he was also scoring friend Martin Scorsese’s 1986 film, The Color of Money, following a pool hustler, Eddie Felson (Paul Newman), who returns to the game and takes on a protégé, Vincent Lauria, played by Tom Cruise.

Along with B.B. King, Robert Palmer, Willie Dixon, Don Henley, Warren Zevon, and Mark Knopfler, Robertson also recorded two tracks on the soundtrack, “Modern Blues” and “The Main Title,” and co-wrote another with Clapton.

Written by Clapton and Robertson, “It’s in the Way That You Use It” is a story about the fleeting nature of money, how it comes and goes.

[RELATED: 4 Songs You Didn’t Know The Band’s Robbie Robertson Wrote for Other Artists]

It’s in the way that you use it
It comes and it goes
It’s in the way that you use it
Boy, don’t you know

And if you lie you will lose it
Feelings will show
So don’t you ever abuse it
Don’t let it go

Nobody’s right until somebody’s wrong
Nobody’s weak until somebody’s strong
No one gets lucky until luck comes along
Nobody’s lonely until somebody’s gone

I’ve seen dark skies, never like this
Walked on some thin ice, never like this
I’ve told you white lies, never like this
Looked into true eyes, never like this

“It’s in the Way That You Use It” was later released on Clapton’s 10th album, August, produced mostly by Phil Collins.

Clapton and Robertson’s Later Collaborations

More than 20 years after writing “It’s in the Way That You Use It,” Robertson and Clapton co-wrote two more songs together—”Fear of Falling” and “Won’t Be Back”—for Robertson’s fifth solo album, How to Become a Clairvoyant, in 2011, featuring a collection of special guests, including Rage Against the Machine’s Tom Morello and Trent Reznor.

“When people underestimate what he [Robertson] does, they want to try doing it,” Clapton shared shortly after Robertson’s death in 2023. “The intros to songs, the little things that sound like they’re scrappy and off the cuff, which is part of his unique attractiveness to me. He sounds like he’s only just now working out that this will work.”

Clapton continued, “I’m sure it’s a lot more crafted out than that. I know him well enough to know he was really precise about what he did. It’s so difficult to recreate that kind of on-the-edge of expression.”

Photo: Robbie Robertson, 1994 (Bob Berg/Getty Images)