LOS ANGELES — Robbie Robertson, the frontman and lead guitarist for The Band whose music inspired the Americana genre, died Wednesday. He was 80.
His death was confirmed by Jared Levine, his longtime manager, the Los Angeles Times reported. Levine said the singer died in Los Angeles after a long illness.
“Robbie was surrounded by his family at the time of his death, including his wife, Janet, his ex-wife, Dominique, her partner Nicholas, and his children Alexandra, Sebastian, Delphine, and Delphine’s partner Kenny,” Levine said in a statement. “In lieu of flowers, the family has asked that donations be made to the Six Nations of the Grand River to support the building of their new cultural center.”
Robertson was the songwriter behind “The Weight,” “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down” and “Up On Cripple Creek,” according to Rolling Stone.
The Band debuted in 1968 with the album “Music From Big Pink,” releasing Americana-style music at the peak of the psychedelic movement, according to the magazine. That album featured “The Weight,” and the group performed the following year at Woodstock, Billboard reported.
Robertson was the sole writer of The Band’s first four hits on the Billboard Hot 100 -- “The Weight” peaked at No. 63, “Up on Cripple Creek” rose to No. 25, “Rag Mama Rag” was at No. 57 and “Time to Kill” at No. 77, according to Billboard.
“The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down,” became Joan Baez’s biggest hit, peaking at No. 3 in 1971, the magazine reported.
Jaime Royal Robertson was born on the Six Nations Reserve outside of Toronto on July 5, 1943, and began playing guitar at age 10, according to the Times. When he was 16 he joined drummer Levon Helm in the Hawks, which was the backing band for Ronnie Hawkins, Billboard reported. They would join keyboardist Richard Manuel, organist Garth Hudson and bassist Rick Danko to form The Band.
“We played everywhere,” Robertson told Rolling Stone in 1968, “from Molasses, Texas to Timmins, Canada, which is a mining town about 100 miles from the tree line.”
The Hawks later played for Bob Dylan on his Going Electric tours in 1965 and 1966, the magazine reported.
According to the Times, Robertson rarely sang in The Band but was definitely the group’s leader, a role he demonstrated in “The Last Waltz,” Martin Scorsese’s documentary about The Band’s 1976 farewell.
By the time the film was released in 1978, Robertson had left the group. But he continued to collaborate with Scorsese, supervising music from “Raging Bull” in 1980 to “Killers of the Flower Moon” in 2022, according to the newspaper.
He also worked with the director on “The King of Comedy,” “The Color of Money,” “Gangs of New York,” “The Departed,” “Shutter Island,” “The Wolf of Wall Street,” “Silence” and “The Irishman,” Variety reported.