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
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.
One of the things I feel very strong about is the achievement of the Band really being a complete band.
One of the greatest live recordings, I think, in the history of the world is Ray Charles in Atlanta... And they didn't even have a big mobile recording thing set up. The word on the street was they only had like two microphones, one for the band and one for him. Perfect recordings. I think it's mono.
Some bands today have the experience of really working together and honing their craft. And other bands are very much like, 'I just got a guitar for Christmas, let's start a band.' And you can hear the difference.
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.
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.
In Americana, the facts and the dreams seem to be all the same to me.
They think just because there's teenagers here, they're always cursing and swearing,
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 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.
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.
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 1966, when we were playing that music, ... people were flipping out with anger at that music and hated it.
A lot of people from my generation can't write songs anymore, or it's really hard and it's an unpleasant experience. I don't feel that way at all.