Another sad day for music, as I awoke to the news that Robbie Robertson has passed away at the age of 80, after a long illness. Jaime Royal Robertson, to give him his full name, was a founder member of The Band, whose music I have loved ever since I bought their first album, Music From Big Pink. They originally started out as The Hawks, backing Ronnie Hawkins, and then became The Band when they began backing Bob Dylan, before branching out on their own, to a good degree of success. Robbie also had a solo career after he left The Band, and it would be remiss if I didn’t mark that today, too.

In his memory I’m going to play you a few of the songs he wrote, both for the band and his solo records. He rarely took on lead vocals for The Band, but is credited with writing many of their best known tracks. That first album wasn’t a major commercial success outside his native Canada and the US, but it did give us one of their most well known and iconic songs, thanks in no small part to it being featured in the Easy Rider movie:

That performance was at the Woodstock festival, on Sunday 17 August 1969. There are other videos of them playing the song live but I’ve always liked this one: I think it’s fabulous. As I said, the song was part of the Easy Rider movie’s soundtrack, but couldn’t be included on the official soundtrack album for copyright reasons. The record company got the band Smith to cover it: I always felt we were short changed by that!

The Band’s second album was simply called The Band, and it gave us a couple of tracks which were hit singles in various countries. This was the first to be released:

This performance of Rag Mama Rag was recorded on Thanksgiving Day, 1976, and the whole concert was filmed by Martin Scorsese, later to be issued both as a movie – The Last Waltz – and a soundtrack triple album. The audience were provided with a full Thanksgiving dinner, followed by dancing and then a concert in two parts, for which many guest artists were invited to join in – Ronnie Hawkins and Bob Dylan amongst them. If you haven’t seen the movie I can recommend it, as a great visual documentation of the band and as a kind of valedictory note, as they were about to break up and this was their final show.

This was the other track from that album to be released as a single. In the UK it is probably better known for the Joan Baez cover which was a hit here, but these guys did it much better. Again, this is from The Last Waltz concert:

The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down has been misunderstood over the years, as some think it supports slavery. Just listen to the lyrics and you’ll hear that isn’t the case: it is written from the perspective of a poor man from the southern US, wondering what will become of him after all has been lost. In effect, it was an early instance of Robbie’s social concerns, which came to the fore throughout his career.

The closing track of that album, King Harvest (Has Surely Come) wasn’t a single, either A- or B-side, but I’ve always liked it. This version, recorded in Robbie’s home studio, displays his guitar skills, which were often underrated by critics:

One final one from The Band before I finish with a couple of Robbie’s solo offerings. This one was actually a co-written effort, as band members Levon Helm and Rick Danko also got credits for it. The video clips I can find for it are a little grainy and dark, so I’m playing a remastered audio-only version from the 2021 ’50th anniversary’ re-release, which sounds great:

Life Is A Carnival was the opening track on The Band’s fourth album, Cahoots, which was released in September 1971 to, unfairly I think, mixed reviews. I didn’t buy it at that time, but a guy along the corridor from me at uni had the album and as he had a very powerful sound system we all got to enjoy listening to it!

I’m closing with a couple of Robbie’s solo songs, one from each of his first two albums. Starting in reverse order, from his second album, Storyville:

The album was released in September 1991 and performed moderately in the Albums charts: #9 in his native Canada, #30 in the UK, and #69 in the US. What About Now was co-written with Ivan Neville, the son of Aaron Neville and nephew to the other members of the Neville Brothers. You can hear their influence on it, I think. I’ve always liked this song, and the video is fun, too. It was released as a single but only charted in Canada, at #4, though it did make #15 on the Mainstream Rock listings in the US, which are based on radio airplay.

My final song in tribute to Robbie is from his eponymous first album, and is a laid back gem:

This video was directed by Martin Scorsese, and features Maria McKee and Sam Llanas. Somewhere Down The Crazy River was a hit single in the UK, reaching #15 here, but nowhere else. I bought the album at the time and loved it. It was produced by Daniel Lanois, who had recently finished work on U2’s Joshua Tree album, and he said this about this one: “Robbie was describing what it was like to hang out with Levon Helm in his old neighbourhood. He was telling me about the hot nights and fishing with dynamite, and was asking someone for directions for some place somewhere down the crazy river. … I had presented him with this instrument that Brian Eno introduced me to, like an electric autoharp. He found a little chord sequence with it that was sweet and wonderful. As he was developing his chord sequence I recorded him and superimposed his storytelling, which I was secretly recording, on top. That was the birth of Somewhere Down The Crazy River. It’s kind of like a guy with a deep voice telling you about steaming nights in Arkansas.” That feels to me like a fitting description of much of Robbie’s songwriting, which could be very evocative, and it is touching that he was writing songs that reminded him of happy times with a former bandmate.

It seems that my musical favourites are leaving us more often than I would care to note, but as always I like to thank them for the enjoyment their music has given me through the years, and it is good to know that they have left that as their legacy.

R.I.P. Robbie 🎶