What happened to Steve Martin? When, exactly, did he cease being the man from masterful comedy LPs like Let’s Get Small and commence being the man who merely occupies space in unbearable family comedies? His is the same strange path trod by Albert Brooks. Both made their mark in the late 70s and early 80s. Both aged prematurely but made it look good. And both declined creatively in what seemed like direct proportion to their soaring box-office success (though Brooks began his decline in the late 80s, and his success came in one shot, as a voice in Finding Nemo). Like Brooks, Martin is a puffy caricature of his former self; both men make it seem as if late middle age and creative exhaustion were ominously and inescapably linked.
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But Brooks hasn’t had a giant question mark shadowing his every move. Steve Martin’s question mark was impossible to ignore. Why did he abruptly end his blockbuster stand-up career in 1981? The riddle stood for a quarter century, until 2007’s unexpectedly revealing autobiography, Born Standing Up. Suddenly the baffling career shift was given dates, details, motives. In one passage he describes standing on a massive stage and peering out at a landscape few other humans will ever see: “The laughs, rather than being the result of spontaneous combustion, now seemed to roll in like waves created far out at sea.” His act had been hijacked by its own success, and Martin was honest enough to walk away cold.
This past January, 28 years later, Martin released The Crow: New Songs for the Five-String Banjo (Rounder). At first glance it seemed like a deliberate counterpoint to the demoralizing megaplex schlock of his 21st-century filmography (Pink Panther 2 would open in less than two weeks). The title track had already become Martin’s first hit single since 1978’s “King Tut”—a different version, released on Tony Trischka’s Double Banjo Bluegrass Spectacular in 2007, dented the bluegrass charts. “I don’t know how much that means,” Martin told the New York Times this winter. “It might have sold two.”
Yes, it’s typecasting, unfair, a bummer. If you see Steve this Thursday night, North Carolina’s formidable Steep Canyon Rangers in tow, approach the festivities with an open mind. He is a truly formidable banjoist. This should be enough. If he were anyone else, it would be.
