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 don't know - it's a bit of a mystery of how things come about when they do. I don't have a scientific explanation for it. Sometimes when you're writing a song, you don't know where you're going.
I didn't even remember that we had recorded this, ... It's been lost for years and years. When I first heard it again, it really touched me. It's so Rick in his charm.
In 1966, when we were playing that music, ... people were flipping out with anger at that music and hated it.
I do remember thinking, 'This is a strange way to make a buck. Travel around the world and people boo you wherever you go,' ... Night after night you just know they're going to boo. Then a few years later you do it again, and everybody acts like they knew it was brilliant all along.
I could never be a movie star and get up at 7:30 to be at someone else's studio.
I do not have yearnings to get back on a bus. If it means getting on a bus, I don't want to do it.
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.
It's easy to be a genius in your twenties. In your forties, it's difficult.
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.
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.
The direction is going the right way for respect for aboriginal people in North America, and all we can do is stand up and say, 'Please do it faster.'
I'm really lucky because I found myself in a position where I can do whatever I want to do. I can make records, produce records, make movies, or I can do nothing. I'm not a slave to the dollar.
Once you establish a foundation of knowing what the greatest recording artists of all time were Wouldn't you want your kids to know this stuff?
I'd always thought Cage's 'Root of an Unfocus' would be great in a movie.