2023-08-10 09:20:43
Canadian guitarist Robbie Robertson, founder of the Canadian-American rock band The Band, has died at the age of 80, his manager told Variety.
Robertson, who collaborated with Bob Dylan, wrote the most famous hits for The Band that were active between the late 1960s and the mid-2000s, including “The White”, “The Night They Drew All Dixie Down” and “Up on Cripple Creek”.
According to statements quoted by “Variety” magazine from his agent, Robertson died surrounded by his family, without specifying the cause of death.
Robertson, born on July 5, 1943 in Toronto, Canada, to a Native American mother, began his artistic career as a teenager by participating in touring music festivals, before joining a number of small bands.
“I’ve been playing guitar for so long that I can’t remember when I started,” he said in a previous interview with Rolling Stone magazine. “I guess I got into rock music like everyone else,” he added.
The guitarist and composer then formed a band in the 1960s, eventually naming it The Band, with Levon Helm on vocals and drums, Garth Hudson on keyboards and saxophone, Richard Manuel on vocals, piano and drums, and Rick Danko on bass.
Hudson remains the last surviving member of the band that collaborated with Dylan, especially on the album “Blond on Blonde”.
This band, which was known especially for rock and folk music in the United States in the sixties and seventies of the last century, made its mark in the music library through famous songs, including “The White”, which mixes folk, country and gospel music.
The band also participated in the famous Woodstock Festival in 1969, and produced the albums “Music from Big Pink”, “The Band” and “Cahoots”.
The Band’s farewell party in San Francisco in 1976 was immortalized on screen two years later, in Martin Scorsese’s documentary The Last Walts, which paved the way for rock films.
After that, Robertson became close to Martin Scorsese, who used him as a musician for his films “Casino” and “Gangs of New York”.
The guitarist stopped touring, but following that he released a number of solo albums, and was appreciated by the rock and folk audience and the narrow circle of American poetry lovers.
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