Background

Ethnicity: Robbie Robertson was of Jewish and Mohawk ethnicity.

Robbie Robertson was born July 5, 1943, in Toronto, Ontario, the son of a Jewish father and Mohawk mother. His father was killed in an accident when he was an infant. His mother then married her co-worker James Patrick Robertson, who adopted him as his son.

Education

Robertson learned guitar at an early age from his family members. He listened to rock'n'roll and R&B music on the radio. In around 1957, he began playing in bands with his friend Pete Traynor. The first band he formed was called Robbie and the Rhythm Chords. It later became Robbie and the Robots.

At the age of sixteen, he dropped out of school in order to pursue a career in music.

Career

Robbie Robertson has been a professional musician since 1959 when he began playing guitar with Ronnie Hawkins and the Hawks in juke joints and dives all across North America. After half a decade as a road band, the Hawks moved to New York City at the invitation of folk and blues singer John Hammond, son and namesake of the renowned talent recruiter and record producer. They arrived just as Hammond, Bob Dylan, and other New York-based folk singers were experimenting with electric amplification. Dylan and Robertson occasionally jammed together, and both Robertson and Helm were part of the band that backed Dylan for the electrified second half of his August 28, 1965, Forest Hills, New York, concert.

Dylan played the Hollywood Bowl on September 3, 1965, beginning a world tour that would take him through the U.S., Canada, Europe, and Australia. The tour showcased Dylan’s newly electrified sound, which was also featured on his just-released Highway 61 Revisited. Winding up at London’s Royal Albert Hall in May of 1966, the tour concluded with two legendry concerts. Dylan’s backup band - Robertson on guitar, Richard Manuel on piano, Garth Hudson on organ, Rick Danko on bass, and Levon Helm on drums - remained unnamed. Although Helm played a few concert dates in September and October of 1965, he was replaced - after a falling out with Dylan - for the rest of the tour by Sandy Konikoff and then by Mickey Jones.

After the tour the Band decided to get off the road for a while and settled down in West Saugerties, New York. Not coincidentally, Dylan lived nearby, in Woodstock. Together, they jammed in a home recording studio in the basement of a house they dubbed "Big Pink." As Rolling Stone described it, "Big Pink is one of those middle-class ranch houses of the type you would expect to find in development row in the heart of suburbia rather than on an isolated mountaintop high above the barn architecture of New York State’s rustic Woodstock."

The Band’s first album was appropriately titled Music From Big Pink. It included cover versions of three previously unreleased Dylan compositions, "I Shall Be Released," "This Wheel’s on Fire," co-written with Danko, and "Tears of Rage" co-written with Manuel. Most of the other songs on the album were penned by Robertson or Manuel. In addition to recording songs for their first album, the Band had also backed Dylan in the studio on some of his compositions, which were released in 1975 on the two-album set The Basement Tapes.

The Band’s second album, simply titled The Band, was their breakthrough LP; though the group had by then relocated to Hollywood, this tribute to rural living and times gone by earned them sizeable financial reward and enabled them to tour as a headlining act. Soon other artists, including Joan Baez, began recording their songs.

The Band’s next releases, Stage Fright and Cahoots, disappointed many of their fans and received mixed reviews. At the end of 1971, they mounted a New Year’s Eve concert at New York’s Academy of Music; recordings from the show were released as the two-record Rock of Ages. It was a strong effort, but it contained little new material. The group’s next album - the title of which, Moondog Matinee, was a reference to pioneering rock disc jockey Alan Freed’s radio show - contained rock and roll oldies.

Toward the end of 1973 members of the Band appeared as backing musicians on Dylan’s Planet Waves LP. Shortly after the recording sessions, Dylan and the Band announced a joint tour. It was Dylan’s first scheduled tour in eight years; fittingly, it had been the Band who had accompanied him on his last tour, the landmark mid-1960s world expedition. The 1974 cross-country tour began in Chicago and ended in Los Angeles. Most of the tour dates were at large venues, including stadiums and coliseums like New York City’s Madison Square Garden and Los Angeles’s Forum.

In 1975 the Band released Northern Lights-Southern Cross, their first album of original material since 1971. The following year they played live for the first time since 1974, at Stanford University, where they were received with great enthusiasm. Later in 1976 they announced that they would no longer appear live. Their final national performance was on NBC-TV’s Saturday Night Live.

Legendary concert promoter Bill Graham staged a farewell concert for the Band on Thanksgiving Day, 1976, at San Francisco’s Winterland - where, according to The Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock & Roll, they had first performed as the Band in 1969. The Band was onstage throughout the concert, which featured guest appearances by luminaries including Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, Van Morrison, Eric Clapton, Neil Diamond, Muddy Waters, Dr. John, Stephen Stills, Ringo Starr, and the man who had given them their break and whom by then they had eclipsed, Ronnie Hawkins. The five-hour concert was recorded and released as an album; an acclaimed film of the extravaganza, by director Martin Scorsese, was released in 1978. Both the album and film were titled The Last Waltz.

Early in 1977 the Band released Islands, the last fruit of their contract with Capitol Records. Although the group had curtailed concert performances, there were expectations that they would continue to record together. But this was not to be. Individual members went on to solo projects or became involved in record production; Helm, for one, dabbled in acting - his role as country singer Loretta Lynn’s father in 1980’s Coal Miner’s Daughter was widely praised. Robertson, who also did some acting, has perhaps been the most visible and successful in his solo career. In the end, though, the group that Sam Sutherland had called "our most mature and authentic rock'n'rollers" simply disappeared after reigning at the forefront of popular music for more than a decade.

In 1987, Robertson released his self-titled solo debut, which included guest appearances from onetime Band-mates Danko and Hudson as well as U2, Peter Gabriel, Daniel Lanois, and Gil Evans. Storyville, a conceptual piece steeped in the sounds and imagery of a famed area of New Orleans, followed in 1991. In 1994, Robertson returned to his roots, teaming with the Native American group the Red Road Ensemble for Music for the Native Americans, a collection of songs composed for a television documentary series. Contact from the Underworld of Redboy followed in 1998.

In 2000, Robertson joined Dreamworks as a creative executive; he signed Nelly Furtado and other artists to the label. In 2002, he performed at the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympic Games in Salt Lake City, Utah. He appeared on Jerry Lee Lewis' comeback recording Last Man Standing in 2006 and made an appearance at Eric Clapton's Crossroads Guitar Festival in 2007. Robertson also remained close to Scorsese. He composed, consulted on, and produced soundtracks for Casino and The Departed, and acted as executive music director on Gangs of New York. He also contributed original music to Shutter Island. Robertson returned to recording with How to Become Clairvoyant on the 429 Records imprint in 2011. The album featured guest appearances by Clapton, Steve Winwood, Trent Reznor, Robert Randolph, Tom Morello, and Angela McCluskey, and entered the Billboard charts at 13. Five years later, Robertson published his memoir, Testimony, releasing a career-spanning compilation of the same name to accompany the book.

In 2019, Robertson released Sinematic, a record inspired by his work in motion pictures. Fittingly, its first single - a duet with Van Morrison called "I Heard You Paint Houses" - was featured in The Irishman, a gangster epic directed by Robertson's old friend Scorsese.

Achievements

• 

  Robbie Robertson (1987), Robertson’s self-titled album is one of the most important and successful works of his career. The album stood at the 38th position on the US Billboard 200 and also charted in Norway and New Zealand. The album earned critical acclaim, with some even calling it one of the best ten albums of the year.
  
  Robertson served as the music producer in the 2006 Oscar-winning crime drama film The Departed. Directed by Martin Scorsese, the story was about an undercover gangster working for the police, and an undercover cop working as a gangster, who try to unravel each other’s true identities before their own covers are blown. The film was a commercial success, and won four Oscars, including the Best Picture and the Best Director.
  
  Robertson’s group ‘The Band’ has been inducted into the Canadian Juno Hall of Fame and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. It was also inducted into Canada’s Walk of Fame in 2014. Robertson has been inducted into the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame. He also received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Academy of Songwriters. In 2011, he was made an Officer of the Order of Canada by Governor General David Johnson.

Works

More photos

• movie

  • The Irishman

    (The Irishman is an epic saga of organized crime in post-w...)

    2019
  • Once Were Brothers: Robbie Robertson and the Band

    (A moving story of Robertson’s personal journey, overcomin...)

    2020
  • Any Given Sunday

    (Oliver Stone scores the ultimate football movie! This pow...)

    1999
  • The King of Comedy

    (Oscar Winner Robert De Niro stars in Martin Scorsese's da...)

    1982
  • The Departed

    (Martin Scorsese's crime drama "The Departed" is set in So...)

    2006
  • Raging Bull

    (Robert De Niro won a Best Actor Oscar in this acclaimed m...)

    1980
  • The Crossing Guard

    (For six agonizing years, Freddy Gale (Nicholson) has wait...)

    1995
  • Rumble: The Indians Who Rocked the World

    (This revelatory documentary brings to light the profound ...)

    2017
  • Going Home

    (The career of one of rock music's premier musicians is ce...)

    1995
  • Phenomenon

    (John Travolta stars in this tale about a small-town mecha...)

    1996
  • Wolves

    (Wolves tells the remarkable story of one of the world's m...)

    1999
  • The Color of Money

    (Money won is twice as sweet as money earned.)

    1986
  • The Last Waltz 1978

• music

  • Music From Big Pink 1968
  • The Band 1969
  • Stage Fright 1970
  • Cahoots 1971
  • Moondog Matinee 1973
  • Northern Lights - Southern Cross 1975
  • Islands 1977
  • Robbie Robertson 1987
  • Storyville 1991
  • Music for the Native Americans 1994
  • Contact From The Underworld Of Redboy 1988
  • How To Become Clairvoyant 2011
  • Sinematic 2019

Views

Robbie is also active in charity work and an active member of the Canadian charity Artist Against Racism. This organization deals with youth and the future of the global community about the basic human rights of equality and funds to reach out to the community.

Membership

• 

  Artists Against Racism

Interests

• Music & Bands

  George "Hound Dog" Lorenz

Connections

Robbie Robertson married a Canadian journalist named Dominique Bourgeois in 1967. The couple has two daughters named Alexandra and Delphine, and a son named Sebastian. Their relationship ended in divorce.

Mother:

Rosemary Chrysler

Wife:

Dominique Bourgeois

Adoptive father:

James Robertson

Daughter:

Alexandra Robertson

Daughter:

Delphine Robertson

Son:

Sebastian Robertson

Friend:

Martin Scorsese

colleague:

Eric Clapton

colleague:

Bob Dylan

References

• Testimony: A Memoir On the 40th anniversary of The Band’s legendary The Last Waltz concert, Robbie Robertson finally tells his own spellbinding story of the band that changed music history, his extraordinary personal journey, and his creative friendships with some of the greatest artists of the last half-century.
  2016
• Rock and Roll Highway: The Robbie Robertson Story Canadian guitarist and songwriter Robbie Robertson is known mainly for his central role in the musical group the Band. But how did he become one of Rolling Stone's top 100 guitarists of all time? Written by his son, Sebastian, this is the story of a rock-and-roll legend's journey through music, beginning when he was taught to play guitar at nine years old on a Native American reservation. Rock and Roll Highway is the story of a young person's passion, drive, and determination to follow his dream.
  2014