Robbie Robertson, lead guitarist and principal composer for Canadian rock legends The Band, died at the age of 80.
Dawn Robertson, a family member, verified the story to NPR.
Among the Rock and Roll Hall of Famer’s songwriting credits are “The Weight,” “Up On Cripple Creek,” and the controversial “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down,” a song narrated from the perspective of Confederate soldiers.
Robertson and The Band, who began as a backup band for rockabilly singer Ronnie Hawkins, rose to prominence as the live backing section for Bob Dylan, who first took them on tour in 1965 as The Hawks. The band quickly rose to prominence as a result of its famous albums, Music From Big Pink, published in 1968, and The Band, released in 1969. In 1976, Robertson helped filmmaker Martin Scorsese immortalise The Band by recording a guest-star-studded concert that was touted as The Band’s farewell gig. The Last Waltz, a concert film directed by Martin Scorsese, would be screened in theatres in 1978.
The members of The Band would reassemble many times in the decades that followed, but Robertson never returned. He composed music for Scorsese films such as Raging Bull and The Colour of Money, as well as releasing a few solo albums. Sinematic, his most recent novel, was published in 2019.
Following Richard Manuel in 1986, Rick Danko in 1999, and vocalist/drummer Levon Helm in 2012, Robertson is The Band’s fourth member to pass away. Garth Hudson, the group’s keyboardist and organist, is the sole surviving member.
Jaime Royal Robertson, the son of a Mohawk woman, was reared on the Six Nations reserve in Ontario before becoming Robbie Robertson. Later in adulthood, he discovered that his biological father, Alexander Klegerman, was a Jewish underworld figure in Toronto notorious for his gambling.
Hawkins, who participated in the documentary Once Were Brothers: Robbie Robertson and The Band, said that “Robbie’s real dad was a Hebrew gangster.”
More in Entertainment: https://buzzing.today/entertainment/
Photo Credits: https://commons.wikimedia.org/