Robbie Robertson, guitarist and songwriting force behind The Band, dead at 80
Robbie Robertson, the string-bending guitarist and principal songwriter of The Band, has died at 80, a representative confirmed to CBC News.
Robertson died on Wednesday morning in Los Angeles after a long illness, according to the representative.
“Robbie was surrounded by his family at the time of his death, including his wife, Janet, his ex-wife, Dominique, her partner Nicholas, and his children Alexandra, Sebastian, Delphine, and Delphine’s partner Kenny,” Jared Levine, Robertson’s longtime manager, said in a statement.
With The Band, Robertson was credited with writing or co-writing the band’s signature songs, including The Weight, The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down, Up on Cripple Creek, The Shape I’m In and Chest Fever.
Canadian musician Robbie Robertson was surprised by his own emotional reaction to reliving his time with The Band in a new documentary called Once Were Brothers.
The Band’s first two albums were especially hailed, each ranking in the top 100 of Rolling Stone’s updated compilation of the top 500 albums of all time in 2020. The same magazine rated Robertson at No. 59 on a list of the 100 greatest guitarists.
The Band were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1994, five years after receiving a similar honour at Canada’s Juno Awards. Robertson won an additional five Junos in a solo recording career that began in the mid-1980s and included popular radio songs Showdown at Big Sky, Somewhere Down the Crazy River and What About Now?.
Robertson was also feted toward the end of his career with Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame (2011) and Canada’s Walk of Fame (2014) honours.
Robertson was one of the first Indigenous rock stars, though few in the white-dominated music press took much notice. He received a lifetime achievement award at the Native American Music Awards in 2017.
Scarborough, Cabbagetown beginnings
He was born Jaime Robertson in Toronto on July 5, 1943 to a mother with Mohawk and Cayuga blood, growing up in homes in Scarborough and Cabbagetown neighbourhoods. While visiting relatives on the Six Nations of the Grand River near Brantford, Ont., he became entranced by the music played by his uncles and older cousins and was given advice by elders he kept close to his heart as he progressed early in his career: “Be proud you are an Indian, but be careful who you tell.”
At 16, his first band opened for Ronnie Hawkins, the colourful Arkansan singer who regularly played Eastern Canadian bars with backup group the Hawks, featuring Levon Helm on drums.
In short order, Hawkins cut two early Robertson songwriting efforts for an album and asked him to join. After Helm and Robertson, the rest of the members of what became The Band were recruited in Ontario between 1961-62: bassist Rick Danko from Simcoe, pianist Richard Manuel from Stratford and the classically-trained organist Garth Hudson from London.
Robbie Robertson on the end of The Band’s touring.
The music was rustic, incorporating elements of blues, country and rhythm and blues, decades ahead of an Americana subgenre that came into vogue. Danko, Helm and Manuel, each with distinctive and powerful voices, took turns as lead singer.
“They had three of the greatest white singers in rock history. To have any one of those guys would be the foundation for a great band,” said Bruce Springsteen in the documentary, Once Were Brothers: Robbie Robertson and The Band.
That documentary, directed by Canada’s Daniel Roher, was the opening film at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2019.
Longtime collaborator to Scorsese
They settled on their new name before the July 1, 1968 release of their debut album, Music From Big Pink.
“The music didn’t sound anything like what we did with Ronnie Hawkins … like anything we did with Bob Dylan on the infamous tour, so having a new name felt natural as well,” said Robertson in Once Were Brothers.
George Harrison and Eric Clapton were among the early high-profile fans, and critics hailed September 1969’s The Band album as well. In a rarity of a rock group at the time, The Band made the cover of Time Magazine in January 1970, heralded as the “future of country rock.”
The Band would be a staple at rock’s early major festivals like Woodstock and Isle of Wight, coming home to Canada for the Toronto Pop Festival and the cross-country Festival Express.
Four more albums followed, with popular songs including Ophelia, Life Is A Carnival and Stage Fright. But Danko, Helm and Manuel all struggled with substance use issues, and Robertson began to tire of touring.
The original lineup bowed out from live performances with an all-star 1976 concert in San Francisco captured on screen two years later in the iconic The Last Waltz, featuring Dylan, Van Morrison and Canadians Neil Young and Joni Mitchell.
Robertson said he too succumbed to a “period of decadence” with drugs, while consorting with pal and Last Waltz director Martin Scorsese in the late 1970s.
Robertson produced and appeared in 1980’s Carny with Jodie Foster, but soon realized acting wasn’t a passion, with a small role in Sean Penn’s The Crossing Guard 15 years later his only other on-screen film credit of note.
More lasting was the relationship with Scorsese, as he worked as a music supervisor on several of the director’s films. Robertson had recently finished writing the musical score for the director’s upcoming film, Killers of the Flower Moon.
