Robbie Robertson – The Band’s lead guitarist and songwriter behind such classics as The Weight, Up On Cripple Creek and The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down – has died aged 80.
Canadian-born Robertson died surrounded by family, a statement from his manager said.
From their years as Bob Dylan’s backing group to their own stardom, The Band profoundly influenced popular music in the 1960s and 70s.
The Band began as supporting players for rockabilly star Ronnie Hawkins in the early 1960s. Besides Robertson, the group featured drummer-singer Levon Helm and three other Canadians: bassist-singer-songwriter Rick Danko, keyboardist singer-songwriter Richard Manuel and all-around musical wizard Garth Hudson.
They were originally called the Hawks, but ended up as The Band — a conceit their fans would say they earned — because people would point to them when they were with Dylan and refer to them as “the band”.
They remain defined by their first two albums, Music From Big Pink and The Band, both released in the late 1960s.
Through the Basement Tapes they had made with Dylan in 1967 and through their own albums, The Band has been widely credited as a founding source for Americana or roots music.
Eric Clapton broke up with his British supergroup Cream and journeyed to Woodstock in hopes he could join The Band, which influenced albums ranging from The Grateful Dead’s Workingman’s Dead to Elton John’s Tumbleweed Connection.
Like Dylan, Robertson was a self-taught musicologist and storyteller who absorbed everything American from the novels of William Faulkner to the scorching blues of Howlin’ Wolf to the gospel harmonies of the Swan Silvertones.
The Band played at the 1969 Woodstock festival, not far from where they lived, and became newsworthy enough to appear on the cover of Time magazine. They toured frequently, recording the acclaimed live album Rock Of Ages at Madison Square Garden and joining Dylan for 1974 shows that led to another highly praised concert release, Before The Flood.
But in 1976, after Manuel broke his neck in a boating accident, Robertson decided he needed a break from the road and organised rock’s ultimate send-off, an all-star gathering at San Francisco’s Winterland Ballroom that included Dylan, Van Morrison, Neil Young, Muddy Waters and many others.
The concert was filmed by Martin Scorsese and the basis for his celebrated documentary The Last Waltz, released in 1978.
Robertson had intended The Band to continue recording together but The Last Waltz helped permanently sever his friendship with Helm, whom he had once looked to as an older brother.
In interviews and in his 1993 memoir Wheel On Fire, Helm accused of Robertson of greed and outsized ego, noting that Robertson had ended up owning their musical catalogue and calling The Last Waltz a vanity project designed to glorify Robertson.
In response, Robertson contended that he had taken control of the group because the others — except Hudson — were too burdened by drug and alcohol problems to make decisions on their own.
“It hit me hard that in a band like ours, if we weren’t operating on all cylinders, it threw the whole machine off course,” Robertson wrote in his memoir Testimony, published in 2016.
The Band regrouped without Robertson in the early 1980s, and Robertson went on to a long career as a solo artist and soundtrack composer.
His self-titled 1987 album was certified gold and featured the hit single Show Down At Big Sky and the ballad Fallen Angel, a tribute to Manuel, who was found dead in 1986 in what was ruled a suicide (Danko died of heart failure in 1999, and Helm of cancer in 2012).
Robertson, who moved to Los Angeles in the 1970s while the others stayed near Woodstock, remained close to Scorsese and helped oversee the soundtracks for The Colour Of Money, The King Of Comedy, The Departed and The Irishman among others.
He also produced the Neil Diamond album Beautiful Noise and explored his heritage through such albums as Music For The Native Americans and Contact From The Underworld Of Redboy.
The Band was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1994; Robertson attended, Helm did not.
Robertson married the Canadian journalist Dominique Bourgeois in 1967. They had three children before divorcing.
