Farewell to a master of rock. Robbie Robertson, composer, singer and guitarist of the Band, died in Los Angeles at the age of 80. His manager, Jared Levine, said Robertson had been ill for some time.
Support group guide who accompanied Bob Dylan in his electric breakthrough in the mid-sixties, Robertson was the soul of the Band that after the adventure with Dylan achieved celebrity in its own rock group par excellence, almost the embodiment of a community of associates. The Band profoundly influenced the popular music of the 1960s and 1970s, first amplifying – literally: Robertson and company played at outlaw volumes – Dylan’s transition from folk artist to rock star and then absorbing Dylan’s works and Dylan’s influences as they fashioned a new sound steeped in America’s past. All wrapped up in their poignant version of I Shall Be Released.
Their first album, Music From Big Pink, published in 1968 is also the perfect example of Robertson’s research work: the blues, filtered through the new sounds of rock, remained a privileged access route to be able to tell the dark and painful roots of the American people. Songs that immediately enter the canon of modern popular song: above all The Weightthe masterpiece of Robertson’s entire career.
A career faithful to the song of the origins, intent on keeping alive the spark of rock and its ability to tell, more than any other cultural form, the American contradictions. Across the Great Divide e The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down, among others, they are vectors of a song programmatically out of time, which managed to illuminate better than many others the cracks that crossed American society in the transition between the dream of the sixties and the “big cold” of the early seventies.
A musical journey that will remain the greatest of Robertson’s entire career and whose outcome was elevated to the rank of cinema by Martin Scorsese who in The Last Waltz (1978) filmed the Band concert of November 25, 1976: a farewell live attended by Bob Dylan himself with Eric Clapton, Emmylou Harris, Dr. John, Joni Mitchell, Van Morrison, Ringo Starr, Muddy Waters, Ronnie Wood, and Neil Young. Robertson later collaborated several times with the American filmmaker working on the soundtracks of The Departed e The Irishman. We will listen to his music again in the next one Killers Of The Flower Moon.
“Robbie was surrounded by his family at the time of his death, including his wife, Janet, his ex-wife, Dominique, his partner Nicholas and his children Alexandra, Sebastian, Delphine and Delphine’s partner, Kenny,” he said his longtime manager Jared Levine in a note. “In lieu of flowers, the family has asked for donations to be made to the Grand River Six Nations to support the construction of their new cultural center.”