Robertson was the lead guitarist
The Band’s primary songwriter and lead guitarist, Robbie Robertson, has died at the age of 80. Robertson died in a Los Angeles area hospital early this morning (Wed, Aug 9th) after battling prostate cancer for the past year.
“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,” Jared Levine, Roberts’ manager of 34 years shares in a statement. “He is also survived by his grandchildren Angelica, Donovan, Dominic, Gabriel and Seraphina. Robertson recently completed his fourteenth film music project with frequent collaborator Martin Scorsese, Killers of the Flower Moon. In lieu of flowers, the family has asked that donations be made to the Six Nations of the Grand River to support a new Woodland Cultural Center.”
The Band formed in Toronto in 1967 with Robertson, multi instrumentalists Rick Danko, Garth Hudson, Richard Manuel and Levon Helm. The group’s sound consisted of Americana, folk, rock, jazz, country, and R&B. They gained recognition in he 1960s backing Bob Dylan and went on to produce their own hits such as “The Weight,” “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down,” and “Up on Cripple Creek.”
The group worked closely with filmmaker Martin Scorsese for The Last Waltz, a 1978 documentary of the group’s Thanksgiving Day shows from 1976 in San Francisco. In 2019, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress.
Last year, The Band celebrated the 50th anniversary of their seminal live album, Rock Of Ages, with an upscaled version of several performance videos from the December 30, 1971 show filmed by Howard Alk and Murray Lerner. The concerts, featuring a guest appearance by Dylan, would fittingly draw the curtain on their time together with another legendary live show, The Last Waltz, but it’s Rock Of Ages that captured them at the apex of their career.
