LEAD GUITARIST, SONGWRITER OF INFLUENTIAL FOLK-ROCK GROUP THE BAND
Robbie Robertson, The Band’s lead guitarist and songwriter who in such classics as “The Weight” and “Up on Cripple Creek” mined American music and folklore and helped reshape rock, died Wednesday at 80.
Robertson died in Los Angeles, surrounded by family, “after a long illness,” publicist Ray Costa said.
From their years as Bob Dylan’s masterful backing group to their own stardom as embodiments of old-fashioned community and virtuosity, The Band profoundly influenced popular music in the 1960s and 1970s, first by literally amplifying Dylan’s polarizing transition from folk artist to rock star and then by absorbing Dylan’s influences as they fashioned a new sound immersed in the American past.
The Canadian-born Robertson was a high school dropout and one-man melting pot — part-Jewish, partMohawk and Cayuga — who fell in love with the seemingly limitless sounds and byways of his adopted country.
The Band started out as supporting players for rockabilly star Ronnie Hawkins in the early 1960s and through their years together in bars and juke joints forged a depth and versatility that made them able to take on virtually any kind of music. Besides Robertson, the group featured drummer-singer Levon Helm, 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.
They remain defined by their first two albums, “Music from Big Pink” and “The Band,” both released in the late 1960s. “Music from Big Pink,” named for the house near Woodstock, N.Y., where Band members lived and gathered, was for many the sound of coming home. The mood was intimate, the lyrics alternately playful, cryptic and yearning, drawn from blues, gospel, folk and country music.
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.
In “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down,” Robertson imagined the Civil War through the eyes of a defeated Confederate. In “The Weight,” with its vocals passed around among members like a communal wine glass, he evoked a pilgrim’s arrival to a town where nothing seems impossible.
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. But the spirit behind their best work was dissolving. While Manuel and Danko were both contributors to songs during their “Basement Tapes” days, by the time of “Cahoots,” released in 1971, Robertson was the dominant writer.
They toured frequently, but in 1976, after Manuel broke his neck in a boating accident, Robertson decided he needed a break from the road and organized a sendoff 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 was the basis
for his 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.
Helm accused Robertson of greed and outsized ego, noting that Robertson had ended up owning their musical catalog and calling “The Last Waltz” a vanity project designed to glorify Robertson. In response, Robertson contended that he had taken control because the others — excepting Hudson — were too burdened by drug and alcohol problems to make decisions on their own.
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 1987 album featured “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 Color of Money,” “The King of Comedy,” “The Departed” and “The Irishman” and the upcoming “Killers of the Flower Moon.”
Robertson married the Canadian journalist Dominique Bourgeois in 1967. They had three children before divorcing. His other survivors include his second wife, Janet Zuccarini, and five grandchildren.