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
I've been really fortunate that I've been at a lot of critical crossroads in my musical journey. When I look back, there are some pretty interesting things to look at.
Think about the number of people who do film music, make records and have a Native American heritage - and I may be the only one on the list.
I've always been in love with that Delta-flavored music... the music that came from Mississippi and Memphis and, especially, New Orleans. When I was 14, I was in a wanna-be New Orleans band in Toronto.
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.
Music isn't necessarily made to last, and there's always been disposable music.
I love traditional music. But in any culture around the world, there is the historic and cultural music and everything that's been passed down and passed down, and hopefully you take that, and then you take it, you know, the next distance, and then somebody else takes it the next distance.
The native music of North America, the original-roots music of this country, is also the underworld music of this country.
I asked Bob Dylan to paint the album cover for 'Music from Big Pink.' He said, 'Yeah, let me see what I can come up with.'
I am fascinated by the places that music comes from, like fife-and-drum blues from southern Mississippi or Cajun music out of Lafayette, Louisiana, shape-note singing, old harp singing from the mountains - I love that stuff. It's like the beginning of rock and roll: something comes down from the hills, and something comes up from the delta.
When you look at that period when Warhol and the Velvets and the Stones were doing things, it was this intersection of art and music. And then it went away.
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.
Chuck Berry told me if it wasn't for Louis Jordan, he wouldn't have probably ever even got into music. That Louis Jordan changed everything and made him want to become a musician.
In ?66 when we were playing that music, people were flipping out with anger at that music and hated it. Then we?re doing it a few years later, and people said, ?This is the real deal, and we knew it all along.
Music should never be harmless.