Songfacts®:

• While Robbie Robertson was working on his Sinematic album, he was also composing the score for Martin Scorsese's crime epic The Irishman. "Beautiful Madness" touches on his time living with Martin Scorsese in the late 1970s. During that period, Robertson and Scorsese were bachelor coke fiends living in an unfurnished apartment with blacked-out windows.
• The lyric references Nick Ray's 1956 film Bigger than Life, which is about a man whose life spins out of control after becoming addicted to cortisone. Uncut magazine asked Robertson whether James Mason's character in the film was someone he identified with back then. He agreed, saying: "It probably was me saying, 'I know how he feels!' In the 1960s and '70s there was a definite madness in the air. At the same time, Martin Scorsese and I would watch movies all the time. Bigger than Life was one of them. I thought, I like riding close to the edge. But I don't want to go over."