Robbie Robertson
Robbie Robertson
Jaime Royal "Robbie" Robertson, OC, is a Canadian singer-songwriter and guitarist best known for his work as lead guitarist and primary songwriter for The Band. As a songwriter, he is credited for "The Weight", "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down", "Up on Cripple Creek", "Broken Arrow", "Somewhere Down the Crazy River", and many others. He has been inducted into the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame and was ranked 59th in Rolling Stone magazine’s list of the 100 greatest guitarists...
NationalityCanadian
ProfessionRock Singer
Date of Birth5 July 1943
CityToronto, Canada
CountryCanada
My mother told me when I was a toddler and in the crib that they would have music playing, and the thing when I lit up was boogie-woogie or something out of the Louie Jordan period of sometimes big bands, and then all kinds of things.
When I was 14 years old, I had the opportunity to meet Buddy Holly. I asked him how he got that big, powerful sound out of his guitar amp. He said, 'I blew a speaker and decided not to get it fixed.'
My mother is extraordinary. She understood me and never tried to hold me back.
I think the most important thing here is... paying homage to other artists. Everybody (is) passing the baton because there are many people who are going to be in this show. If it wasn't for them, a lot of the rest of us wouldn't be doing this.
I thought of a lot of people from the same era when I was making a lot of records that had continued making a lot of records. A lot of it didn't seem terribly inspired.
My mother was a Mohawk, born and raised on a reservation, and when I was a kid, she would take me there to visit her relatives.
I was a storyteller for The Band. It was never, 'Hey guys, here's a song about what happened to me.' I was always more comfortable writing fiction.
After the 'Last Waltz' concert, it just seemed very healthy to me to put making a record as far out of my mind as I possibly could.
The Band is probably the ultimate example of people taking all kinds of music, from gospel to blues to mountain music to folk music to on and on and on and on and putting them all in this big pot and mixing up a new gumbo.
Cowboys had guitars. And they sang country 'cause they lived in the country.
It's easy to be a genius in your twenties. In your forties, it's difficult.
There's a thing that has happened in the U.S. where the spirit has been beaten so badly and so you feel no unity in the voice of the country.
It made me look like I all of a sudden stumbled upon my heritage. It's not like that. You don't stumble upon your heritage. It's there, just waiting to be explored and shared. But what you need is a sign that somebody wants to share this with you.
They think just because there's teenagers here, they're always cursing and swearing,