Robbie Robertson’s sudden passing has saddened music fans from continuing generations, including mine.
His unexpected Aug. 9 leaving, at age 80, was first a shock and then, upon reflection, further proof that time inevitably marches on.
Even for our heroes, musical and otherwise — although Robertson didn’t seem the type who wanted to be anyone’s hero.
He is known as the principle songwriter and guitarist with The Band, four Canadian and one American musicians who changed what we listen to, and watch, during their 16 years of touring, playing and recording some of my favourite music.
The Band included drummer/singer Levon Helm, pianist/vocalist Richard Manuel, bassist/singer Rick Danko, and multi-instrumentalist (organ, piano, horns, synthesizer, etc.) Garth Hudson, now the lone living member of the group with Robertson’s passing.
In the early 1960s, they backed Arkansas singer Ronnie Hawkins in every Toronto bar and club worth knowing, playing a brand of rockabilly music that just missed being popular.
After heading out on their own, as Levon and the Hawks, they toured with Bob Dylan in the mid-1960s, as the popular folksinger became a most unpopular rock singer to his folkie fans, while playing some of the loudest blues and rock music of the day — and as later listenings reveal, some of the very best.
With Dylan, The Band — sometimes with Helm, sometimes without him — retreated to the Woodstock, N.Y. area where they made rustic music that took nearly a decade to surface on The Basement Tapes.
But all this time Robertson was learning how to make the music he really wanted to hear, taking what was going on around him and incorporating into his own lyrics and tunes.
It’s been called everything from Americana to folk-rock blues, but it’s difficult to describe in words.
What’s that phrase, “writing about music is like dancing about architecture”?
Elvis Costello is often credited with saying it, although he denies uttering the words.
What Robertson, Hudson, Danko, Manuel, and Helm, the lone American, came up with was Music From Big Pink in 1968, named after the pink house that spawned the songs and the attitude to play them, that way.
Their playing and singing was about serving the song, its words, its melodies — not guitar solos or vocal gymnastics or psychedelic noise, which was all the rage in the late-1960s.
Once they got going, there seemed to be no stopping them or their albums.
After Music From Big Pink came The Band, Stage Fright, Cahoots, Rock of Ages (live), Moondog Matinee (authentic covers), Northern Lights-Southern Cross, Islands (essentially leftovers), and then, in 1976, The Last Waltz, a final live show with all of their musical friends.
Songs like The Weight, The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down, The Shape I’m In, Up On Cripple Creek, It Makes No Difference, King Harvest (Has Surely Come), Across the Great Divide, Ophelia, Life is a Carnival and The W. S. Walcott Medicine Show can only be described as brilliant. I could list a dozen more classics, but you get the drift.
Robertson wrote most of the songs, getting just a little help from the others along the way in that department. Helm, Manuel and Danko handled the vocals. All five helped arrange the songs, although Hudson deserves particular credit (his Band-mates called him 'Honey Boy' for the way he sweetened the arrangements of their songs).
By The Last Waltz, however, Robertson had had enough of Helm, Danko and Manuel, their habits, their work ethic, etc.
Nothing lasts forever, especially after 16 years.
Watching The Last Waltz, which officially came out in 1978, and Once Were Brothers, in 2020, Robertson’s own documentary, explains The Band’s demise much better than I ever could.
Robertson continued writing songs, putting out solo albums to mostly good critical reviews and respectable sales.
But it wasn’t the same.
I always thought the best songs on his albums would have been superior had they been sung by Helm or Manuel or Danko or better yet, all three together.
Some things have had their day and it’s just best to let them go.
That’s how I feel about The Band, most of the time.
After Robertson’s death, I watched The Last Waltz again — on DVD, those round discs, although I’m sure it was streaming somewhere.
It’s still great, the standard for such musical documentaries, thanks in large part to Robertson and director Martin Scorsese. Didn’t hurt to have Dylan, Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, Van Morrison, Muddy Waters, Eric Clapton, Paul Butterfield, Dr. John, Neil Diamond, and Hawkins helping showcase The Band’s rich musical landscape.
I saw The Band in concert once, Aug. 31, 1976, the summer before The Last Waltz, at the CNE Grandstand in Toronto. It was part of their June 26-Nov. 25 (The Last Waltz concert), Northern Lights-Southern Cross tour.
They were great at the CNE, to put it mildly, and Robertson’s guitar playing was as loud and as clean as I’ve ever heard. No wonder The Band was so tight for their last show at Winterland in San Francisco — and a stint on Saturday Night Live before it.
What I still hear from The Band is unparalleled musicianship, which serves the song above all, the outstanding natural melodies, old Garth’s sweetening, with a horn here or an organ wash there, Danko and Manuel’s vocal harmonies, Helm’s precise drumming and great voice, all the interesting characters in Robertson’s songs and distinctive, precise string-bending from his guitar.
It all works so well together.
The Band were all done by The Last Waltz, almost 47 years ago.
That their music is still remembered and cherished by so many is evident with Robertson’s passing.
Bob Bruton covers city council for BarrieToday, when he isn’t listening to real music. That always includes The Band, and always will.
