Tim Robbins Finally Released the ‘Bob Roberts’ Soundtrack
So don’t complain and complain and complain and complain and complain.
The Bob Roberts soundtrack is finally available for sale, after more than 30 years. The songs, written and performed by Tim Robbins in the Bob Roberts persona, have never been commercially available before, leaving fans to rip them from the movie — background noise and all.
You can get it here, and read on for context.
In 1992, Lionsgate released Bob Roberts, a mockumentary that followed a far-right U.S. Senate candidate along the campaign trail. Something that differentiated Bob Roberts from any other movie with a similar premise was that it was also heavily inspired by D. A. Pennebaker’s beloved documentary Don’t Look Back, centering on Bob Dylan around the time he “went electric.”
That meant our titular character — played by writer and director Tim Robbins — also had to sing. Luckily for the audience, Robbins comes from a musical family. His father, Gil Robbins, was a lefty folk singer who played with The Highwaymen.
(And yes, for the non-trivial number of Phil Ochs fans who read this blog, The Highwaymen were named after the Alfred Noyes poem “The Highwayman,” which Ochs would later record as a song.)
Robbins wrote and performed the songs that Bob Roberts sung in the movie, and Bob Roberts was not the only time he appeared in the role. Before the movie was released, he appeared on Saturday Night Live as Bob — ironic, since the movie featured a pastiche of SNL, in which the Lorne Michaels stand-in tries to censor the show’s host.
The catchy folk songs were perfect for the film — but given the straight-ahead delivery of the music, Robbins was reportedly worried that they could be appropriated by far-right activists and candidates who do real-world harm. As such, he resisted an offer from Warner Bros. to release the soundtrack.
Over the years, fans have lamented the lack of a soundtrack in what is effectively a musical. That said, most fans understood the desire to avoid a wide release.
Now, Robbins has released it on his personal store, opened last month, where he is selling off (and giving away) audio and video from his long career, as well as props, t-shirts, and other merchandise.
Bob Roberts, which was nominated for a Golden Globe Award and parodied on The Simpsons, was the feature film debut of superstar actor and musician Jack Black, who appeared at yesterday’s Power to the People Festival.
Bob Roberts currently streams on Prime Video.
