Robbie Robertson dead at 80: Band leader who worked with Bob Dylan and Martin Scorsese dies of prostate cancer in Los Angeles

Robbie Robertson, the frontman of the classic rock group The Band, died in Los Angeles on Wednesday at the age of 80.

His manager of 34 years Jared Levine released a statement in Variety revealing Robertson’s death came at the end of a long illness. Sources have informed TMZ that the musician has succumbed to prostate cancer.

Some of the most loved songs he wrote for The Band are The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down, Up On Ripple Creek and The Weight.

When Robertson’s lifelong friend Bob Dylan controversially switched to electric in the 1960s, it was The Band who supported him on stage.

Robertson also had a long professional relationship with Martin Scorsese, first with The Band and then as solo composer on a series of the filmmaker’s classics.

Icon: Some of the most loved songs he wrote for The Band include The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down, Up On Ripple Creek, and The Weight; pictured 1971

“Robbie was surrounded by his family at the time of his death, which included his wife Janet, his ex-wife Dominique, her partner Nicholas and his children Alexandra, Sebastian, Delphine and Delphine’s partner Kenny,” his manager’s statement said. .

“He is also survived by his grandchildren Angelica, Donovan, Dominic, Gabriel and Seraphina,” Levine added. “Robertson recently completed his fourteenth film score project with frequent collaborator Martin Scorsese, Killers of the Flower Moon.”

Featuring a top-notch cast including Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro, Killers Of The Flower Moon follows a plan by white Americans to seize oil discovered on their lands by the Osage Indians.

“In lieu of flowers, the family has asked for donations to the Six Nations of the Grand River to support the construction of their new cultural center,” Levine said.

Robertson was born in Toronto in 1943 to a mother who grew up on the Canadian Six Nations reservation and was of Mohawk and Cayuga descent.

During his own childhood visits to his maternal family on the reservation, Robertson quickly developed an abiding taste for music.

“It seemed to me that everyone was playing a musical instrument or singing or dancing. I thought: ‘I have to join this club!'” he told the club Guardian.

His instrument of choice was the guitar, which he thought looked “pretty cool,” and his mother gave him one with a cowboy painting on it.

“I found it very ironic that Indians taught me how to play guitar with a picture of a cowboy on it,” Robertson recalls dryly.

During his teenage years, he began working on the fringes of the entertainment industry, running traveling carnivals and even a freak show.

By the age of 15 he had joined Toronto’s burgeoning rock scene – and in 1958 helped form the group that became The Band.

Under their original name The Hawks, they provided backup for Ronnie Hawkins, the tough rockabilly who himself died last year at the age of 87.

In 1967 they transitioned into The Band, having already provided backup for Bob Dylan on his furiously polarizing electric tour.

An enduring friendship developed between Dylan and Robertson, as recounted in the latter’s memoir Testimony, in which he writes of how they got stoned together and mingled with an artistic social circle ranging from the Beatles to Salvador Dali.

Robertson even had to save Dylan’s life once – the folk legend was once so dead to the world that he almost drowned in the tub, only for Robertson to fish him out.

After the divisive Dylan tour, the Hawks became The Band and released their seminal debut album Music From Big Pink in 1968.

With its blend of soul, country and rock genres, Music From Big Pink was a major influence on top artists such as Eric Clapton and Pink Floyd.

A year later, they followed that record up with a self-titled album that contained some of their best-known songs to this day.

While no stranger to drugs, Robertson managed to sidestep the heroin problem that plagued his bandmates as their rise to fame continued.

However, he couldn’t avoid a bitter feud with The Band’s drummer, Levon Helm, which stemmed from a dispute over copyright issues and songwriting credits.

Eventually, the tensions that erupted between the musicians over the drugs and the business side of their relationship became insurmountable.

In 1976, six years after landing on the cover of Time magazine, the band played their iconic farewell show The Last Waltz at San Francisco’s Winterland Ballroom.

It was this famous concert that marked the birth of Robertson’s relationship with Martin Scorsese, who filmed the performance for a critically acclaimed rock documentary.

According to Helm, Robertson – whose decision it was to break up the band – was so pale with fatigue that his wife had to slather him with make-up on camera.

Robertson eventually broke away from the band, but kept his professional association with Scorsese as a composer for several of his films.

Fan favorites like Raging Bull, The King Of Comedy, and The Wolf Of Wall Street feature original music by Robertson, as well as lesser-known features like Silence.