Robbie Robertson, the Canadian composer and lead guitarist for The Band who once described his hillbilly and R&B-influenced songs as offering “a passport back to America for people who had become so estranged from their country that they felt like foreigners even when they were in it,” died Wednesday in Los Angeles. He was 80.
His manager, Jared Levine, said he died after a long illness.
Robertson drew upon country music, Mississippi delta blues, soul and gospel in memorably earthy songs inspired by the tradition and history of his adopted country.
In Band songs such as the American Civil War tale “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down” and the infectious “Up on Cripple Creek” and “Rag, Mama, Rag,” which echoed of a bygone barn dance, Robertson offered the musical antithesis of the loud hard rock embraced by the Woodstock generation and beyond. He is considered one of the founders of the music genre known as Americana.
Best known for his work as lead guitarist for Bob Dylan in the mid-late 1960s and early-mid 1970s, as guitarist and songwriter with the Band from their inception until 1978, and for his career as a solo recording artist, Robertson was inducted into the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame, and received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Academy of Songwriters.
He collaborated with director Martin Scorsese on a number of films, beginning with the 1978 Band concert documentary “The Last Waltz,” and continuing through “Raging Bull,” “The King of Comedy,” “Casino,” “The Departed,” and others.
Robertson came to music early. His father was from Toronto and his mother, of Mohawk descent, was born and raised on the Six Nations Reservation in Canada. Robertson began learning guitar from relatives during his summer visits to the reservation.
By the early 1960s, Robertson and the musicians who would later become The Band were barnstorming clubs in the U.S. and Canada as Ronnie Hawkins & The Hawks, and playing rock ‘n’ roll packages with such acts as Chuck Berry, Carl Perkins and Jackie Wilson.
In the summer of 1965, Dylan was looking for a backing band for his first “electric” tour. Robertson was recruited to play guitar, and after two shows the balance of The Hawks were brought aboard. With Dylan, The Hawks played concerts from September 1965 through May 1966, marking Dylan’s transition from folk to rock.
Tired of the road, Robertson and other Band members to be left Dylan and retreated to the small town of Woodstock, New York, to begin creating what would become their influential 1968 debut album, “Music From Big Pink.” Featuring now-classic tunes by Robertson — including the oft-covered “The Weight” — the album was revered by critics and the likes of the Beatles, Eric Clapton and the Rolling Stones.
Speaking of The Band in the 2020 documentary “Once Were Brothers,” Bruce Springsteen said, “It’s like you’d never heard them before and like they’d always been there.”
The following year, with the release of The Band’s self-titled second album, the group became the first North American musical act to be featured on the cover of Time magazine. The Band called it quits in 1976 with a lavish farewell at San Francisco’s Winterland on Thanksgiving Day. The hours-long Last Waltz concert, with more than a dozen special guests, was filmed by Scorsese, the start of Robertson’s long collaboration with the filmmaker.
Robertson also took an interest in acting and co-starred with Gary Busey and Jodie Foster in 1980’s “Carny,” a drama about a traveling carnival.
After eight studio albums with the Band, Robertson recorded his first solo album in 1986.
In 2000, music industry legends David Geffen and Mo Ostin convinced Robertson to join DreamWorks Records as creative executive.
His 2016 autobiography “Testimony” was a best-seller.
Robertson is survived by his wife, Janet; his ex-wife, Dominique; his children Alexandra, Sebastian, Delphine, and Delphine’s partner Kenny; and five grandchildren.