Robbie Robertson
Jaime Royal “Robbie” Robertson OC (July 5, 1943 – August 9, 2023) was a Canadian musician. He was lead guitarist for Bob Dylan in the mid-late 1960s and early-mid 1970s, guitarist and songwriter with The Band from their inception until 1978, and a solo artist.
Robertson’s work with the Band was instrumental in creating the Americana musicgenre. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the Canadian Music Hall of Fame as a member of the Band, and into Canada’s Walk of Fame, with the Band and on his own. He is ranked 59th in Rolling Stone magazine’s list of the 100 greatest guitarists. He wrote “The Weight“, “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down“, and “Up on Cripple Creek” with the Band and had solo hits with “Broken Arrow” and “Somewhere Down the Crazy River“, and many others. He was inducted into the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame, and received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Academy of Songwriters.
Robertson collaborated on film and TV soundtracks, usually with director Martin Scorsese, beginning in the rockumentary film The Last Waltz (1978) and continuing through dramatic films including Raging Bull (1980), The King of Comedy (1983), Casino (1995), Gangs of New York (2002), The Wolf of Wall Street (2013), Silence(2016), The Irishman (2019), and Killers of the Flower Moon (2023), scoring the latter shortly before his death. The film was dedicated to his memory, and garnered him a posthumous nomination for Best Original Score at the Academy Awards.