He had founded the folk and rock group The Band. Canadian guitarist Robbie Robertson died Wednesday at the age of 80, his manager announced on variety-magazine. A collaborator of Bob Dylan, Robertson wrote the best-known songs of his group The Band, active from the late 1960s to the middle of the following decade: The Weightthe group’s masterpiece, but also The Night They Drove Ol’ Dixie Down And Up On Cripple Creek.
According to his agent, quoted by Variety, Robertson died surrounded by his family but without knowing the precise cause of his death. He was born on July 5, 1943 in Toronto, Canada to a Native American mother. As a teenager, he went on the roads of itinerant music festivals, before joining a number of small music groups.
After his band ended, Robertson befriended Scorsese
“I’ve been playing guitar for so long that I can’t remember when I started,” he once told Rolling Stone magazine. “I imagine that I got into rock like everyone else,” he said with humility.
This guitarist and composer then founded in the 1960s a group which he ended up baptizing The Band with Levon Helm on vocals and drums, Garth Hudson on keyboards and saxophone, Richard Manuel on piano, drums and vocals and Rick Danko on bass. Hudson is the last survivor of the group, which collaborated in force with Dylan in particular on the album Blonde on Blonde. After the end of the group, Robbie Robertson became close to filmmaker Martin Scorsese, who hired him as a musician for his films “Casino” and “Gangs of New York”.