Music: The Band’s guitarist Robbie Robertson dies

Music
The Band guitarist Robbie Robertson dies

Guitarist and songwriter Robbie Robertson, co-founder of The Band, is dead. Photo

© Evan Agostini/Invision via AP/dpa

Robbie Robertson was part of the group The Band. He has now passed away at the age of 80.

The guitarist and songwriter Robbie Robertson, co-founder of the group The Band, is dead. He died yesterday in Los Angeles after a long illness surrounded by his family, his manager said, according to US media reports. Robertson was 80 years old. According to manager Jared Levine, the Canadian-born recently collaborated with director Martin Scorsese on the soundtrack for his new film “Killers of the Flower Moon”.

Robertson, son of a Mohican mother, had learned to play the guitar as a youth on the Six Nations reservation. The Band rose to fame backing Bob Dylan in the 1960s and later released albums of their own, including Music from Big Pink (1968) and The Last Waltz (1978). Robertson and his bandmates mixed blues with rock, folk and country. Songs like “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down” and “Up on Cripple Creek” were among their hits.

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Two years later, Scorsese documented the group’s legendary final concert in San Francisco in 1976 in his concert film “The Last Waltz”. Robertson took part in numerous of the director’s projects, including films such as Raging Bull, Shutter Island and The Irishman. In 2019, the documentary “Once Were Brothers: Robbie Robertson and The Band” about the life and work of the musician premiered at the Toronto Film Festival.

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