The Band lead guitarist and songwriter Robbie Robertson has died at age 80, his manager announced on Wednesday.
“Robbie was surrounded by his family at the time of his death, including his wife, Janet, his ex-wife, Dominique, her partner Nicholas, and his children Alexandra, Sebastian, Delphine, and Delphine’s partner Kenny,” Jared Levine, Robertson’s manager of 34 years, said in a statement. “He is also survived by his grandchildren Angelica, Donovan, Dominic, Gabriel, and Seraphina.”
Robertson recently worked on music for the upcoming Killers of the Flower Moon. His family asked that, in lieu of flowers, donations be made to the Six Nations of the Grand River.
Robertson and the Band, then known as the Hawks, found early success as Bob Dylan’s backing band from 1965 to 1966. Concertgoers initially hated the music, booing them, but Robertson has said that Dylan encouraged them to just play louder and faster.
“Some years later, it turned out that we discovered, that this was part of a musical revolution,” Robertson told SiriusXM in a 2019 interview. “It changed music forever.”
Robertson wrote many of the Band’s best known songs, including The Weight, Up On Cripple Creek and The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down.
Martin Scorsese directed the Band’s 1976 farewell concert, The Last Waltz. Robertson worked with the director as composer, music supervisor, and music producer starting in 1980 on films including Raging Bull, The King of Comedy, The Color of Money, Gangs of New York, The Departed, Shutter Island, The Wolf of Wall Street, Silence, The Irishman and Flower Moon.
The Band is in the Canadian Music Hall of Fame and the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. The National Academy of Songwriters awarded Robertson a Lifetime Achievement Award in 1997.