Native rock legend Robbie Robertson dies at 80

In the heart of every Native is a storyteller, and not surprising for tribal people with only an oral tradition to explain to the generations to come who they were, what they believed. Robbie Robertson had the gift for storytelling, and he could have been a writer, but he also could write music, and so he channeled all his energy and imagination into writing some of the most iconic folk rock songs of the 20^th Century.

Robertson died on August 9, at his home in Los Angeles, at the age of 80, after a long battle with prostate cancer.

“I just like great storytelling,” Robertson once said. “I think a lot of the biblical stories are pretty terrific. And sometimes you just go in a certain direction, and it gives it a stronger feeling. Whenever I would write a song it kind of pulled from that place, that biblical place.” 

Most people who loved songs like “Up on Cripple Creek,” “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down,” “The Weight,” and “Life is a Carnival,” had no idea who Robbie Robertson was, or that he had written the songs, or that he was the son of a Canadian Mohawk mother, Jamie Royal Robertson, and a father he never met, an American gambler of Jewish descent, Alexander David Klegerman.

Inside Robertson percolated an internal Americana that encompassed a broad spectrum normally found in a group of people, not just a single person. From the beginning Robertson was able to tap that resource and create great tapestries for his band, organically called The Band, which formed in 1967 and disbanded in 1973, and left an impact on the rock music scene which resonates to this very day. In a recent documentary, Once Were Brothers, Robertson talked about the Band, the breakup, and like his song writing, he weaves a simple, unpretentious, yet deeply compelling story about who they were, how they made their music, and what happened to break them up.

For whatever reason, among the pantheon of great Native artists, Robertson is not a name most people mention. Sachem Little Feather secured more fame by just rejecting Marlon Brando’s Academy Award, and she was not even a real Native. Robertson’s legacy lies in the substance of what he created and shared with the world, not in a celebrity image he cultivated and embellished.

By the early 1960’s Robertson was a member of a band called Levon and the Hawks. Levon Helm was the drummer, and Robertson was in his shadow until his guitar playing skill brought him to the attention of Bob Dylan in 1964. Robertson suggested he hire Helm as a drummer, and Robertson played with Dylan for three years.

Dylan had already established himself as one of the world’s greatest folk singers, but he wanted to create folk rock, and this transition to electric guitar was not a smooth transition. Dylan’s adoring fans could not accept Dylan as rock star, and they let their objections be known.

“We got booed all over North America, Australia, Europe,” Robertson said, “and people were saying this isn’t working, and we kept on and Bob didn’t budge.”

Eventually Dylan’s vision of folk rock prevailed, but by that time Robertson and others had matured as artists and had created their own expression of folk rock. In 1967, Rich Danko, Garth Hudson, Richard Manuel, Robbie Robertson and Levon Helm formed the Band and released an album, Music From Big Pink. This produced a single, The Weight, listed by Rolling Stone as one of the top 500 rock n’ roll songs of all time.

From the beginning Helm had been the front man, but as Robertson’s reputation as a virtuoso guitarist and brilliant song writer grew, Helm’s resentment grew accordingly, to the extent Robertson and Helm became estranged for decades. Helm insisted he did not receive credit for writing certain iconic Band songs, like The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down, but Robertson said in an interview that Helm’s contributions on that song consisted of driving him to the library and suggesting he not mention Abraham Lincoln in the song.

“I gave Levon writing credits on things where he was just there when I was writing it,” Robertson said in a 2020 interview. “Because I cared so much about the brotherhood. I cared so much about everybody’s involvement, and I was really trying to encourage him or the other guys to write as much as possible. But in the very beginning, I was the only one that wrote songs, and in the end, I was the only one that wrote songs. I can’t fix that. I can’t change that.”

At some point, after sixteen years of struggle and touring around the world from cubby hole clubs in rough neighborhoods to the biggest stage tours in rock, Robertson had had enough of touring.

“I completely admire people that have a need to be in front of people and to perform,” Robertson said. “I get all of that, but I just needed to use a different muscle. I needed to use a different part of my brain, and I didn’t feel this hunger to get up in front of everybody and show off. I wanted to do different things. And I did it.”

Robertson wanted to enter a new creative phase, connect more deeply with his Native roots, and during the decades after the Band broke up, he did a couple of movies and he wrote scores for some of Martin Scorsese’s best films, including the score for Scorsese’s latest film, Killers of the Flower Moon. The first Scorsese film on which Robertson worked was 1980’s Raging Bull, and then came the King of Comedy (1983), and The Color of Money (1986). Robertson also worked with Scorsese on Casino and Gangs of New York.

On his working relationship with Scorsese, Robertson said: “He’s a frustrated musician, and I guess I was a frustrated filmmaker. So, it was a perfect connect.”

Even though he was no longer in the rock spotlight, Robertson was having an impact on the movie score industry and continuing to expand his creative range.

Songwriter Maria McKee said of Robertson: “Robbie was a storyteller, and he loved a Southern Gothic atmosphere. His writing about Dixie when he was from Canada was similar to me growing up in Beverly Hills writing about ‘Dixie Storms’ — not being bound by geography or time and being like a novelist, really. Not all songs have to be from personal experience. If I wanted to write about the Napoleonic war, nobody could tell me that it wasn’t personal. It’s personal to me! We read everything, why not write about everything?”

More than any other Native artist before him, Robertson wrote about everything, and he painted such a broad brushstroke across the entertainment industry the full spectrum of his contributions won’t be appreciated for many decades to come.

(Contact James Giago Davies at skindiesel@msn.com)

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