“The Weight,” “Up on Cripple Creek,” “The Evening They Drove Previous Dixie Down” plus extra Robertson-penned favorites chosen by Billboard‘s employees.
Rick Danko, Robbie Robertson, Levon Helm, Richard Manuel and Garth Hudson of The Band pose for a bunch portrait in London in 1971.
Gijsbert Hanekroot/Redferns
One of the crucial necessary voices in rock of the late Sixties and early ’70s — regardless that he didn’t sing lead on a lot of his most well-known songs — died this week. Robbie Robertson, guitarist and first songwriter for Rock and Roll Corridor of Famers The Band (and later solo performer and movie composer), died Wednesday (Aug. 9) at age 80 after a protracted sickness.
Rising out of the group The Hawks, which served because the backing band for rockabilly singer Ronnie Hawkins after which legendary singer-songwriter Bob Dylan, The Band emerged within the late ’60s as a totally fashioned rock outfit, with a pair of traditional albums: 1968’s Music From Large Pink and 1969’s self-titled album. The group’s rootsy sound and soulful performances, mixed with Robertson’s evocative and enigmatic songwriting and powerful knack for melody, helped set the early commonplace for the hybrid style that will finally develop into referred to as Americana, inspiring whole generations of future musicians.
As The Band fractured over the course of the ’70s, Robertson additionally turned an in-demand producer and visitor guitarist — after which within the ’80s, he additionally started a protracted collaboration with filmmaking nice Martin Scorsese, scoring his The Colour of Cash (and, a lot later, The Irishman) and offering extra music and music supervision to many different Scorsese movies. He additionally launched an acclaimed solo profession, together with his self-titled 1987 debut successful the Juno Award in his native Canada for album of the yr.
With a decades-spanning profession that remained related and important for a lot of a long time after his debut, Robertson’s catalog ranks among the many most important of the rock period. Listed below are our employees’s picks for his most important songs, offered in chronological order.
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“Look Out Cleveland” (The Band)
One thing of an outlier amongst The Band’s predominantly rootsy first two albums, “Look Out Cleveland” is a rollicking blast of bar-band blues, the place the group’s historical past backing Ronnie Hawkins and Bob Dylan is clear in construction and sterling execution. Rick Danko successfully sells each Robertson’s lyrics, written from the angle of a narrator warning of us a couple of storm rolling into city, and his instrumental, with a bouncing bass line. Surprisingly, “Look Out Cleveland” has taken on a second life lately within the jam-band group: Phish coated the music in 2010, and the rising Connecticut group Goose has performed it a number of occasions since introducing the monitor to its repertoire in 2020. — ERIC RENNER BROWN
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“Chest Fever” (Music From Large Pink)
With evocative, elliptical strains like “She’s been down within the dunes/ And he or she’s handled goons,” “Chest Fever” is an ideal slice of The Band’s rustic psychedelia — and, fittingly, in 1969, the group opened their Woodstock set with the Music From Large Pink monitor. Garth Hudson’s virtuosic organ, which leans closely on Bach’s “Tocatta and Fugue in D Minor,” defines the monitor, however its relentless, driving instrumental is all Robertson. (Levon Helm would later dispute Robertson’s credit score as sole lyric author.) Not that any of this meant a lot to Robertson, who would later say, “If you happen to like ‘Chest Fever,’ it’s for God is aware of what cause. … It doesn’t make notably any type of sense within the lyrics, within the music, within the association, in something.” — E.R.B.
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“Damaged Arrow” (Robbie Robertson)
Certainly one of Robertson’s most romantic songs, “Damaged Arrow” is from his 1987 self-titled solo album. Atmospheric and dreamy, Robertson sings of a associate who turns his “complete world round.” “I gotta maintain you in these arms of metal/ Lay your coronary heart on the road,” as he counts “the beads of sweat that cowl me.” Whether or not it’s or not, the entire affair feels slightly forbidden and clandestine, including to its enchantment. Rod Stewart had successful with the music, taking his model to No. 20 in 1991. — MELINDA NEWMAN
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“To Kingdom Come” (Music From Large Pink)
Like many of the songs on Music From Large Pink, “To Kingdom Come” is a group effort; it’s powerful to think about its effervescent groove with none of The Band’s members. However Robertson’s the monitor’s MVP: He penned the tune, together with its economical however vivid biblical lyrics; delivered its iconic, lilting guitar solo, which continues into the horizon even because the music fades out; and even took a uncommon and compelling lead vocal flip. Appropriately, the band’s two-disc 1989 greatest-hits set used the music as its namesake. — E.R.B.
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“Rag Mama Rag” (The Band)
The loosey-goosey really feel of “Rag Mama Rag” is intentional; to shake issues up, the group’s members shifted to devices they didn’t usually play, similar to Levon Helm taking part in mandolin as a substitute of drums, along with singing lead, whereas pianist Richard Manuel performed drums. Nevertheless it’s Garth Hudson’s upright, ragtime-style piano taking part in that actually anchors the monitor, because the rollicking tune feels prefer it’s wafting out into the evening from a New Orleans jazz corridor. — M.N.
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“This Wheel’s on Fireplace” (Music From Large Pink)
Written by Bob Dylan and Band bassist Rick Danko, “This Wheel’s on Fireplace” marks one of many group’s most unsettling information — a haunted near-dirge with an inscrutable lyric and lovely refrain harmonies, and Robertson’s searing guitar work offering a uncommon supply of stability. The reminiscence of “Wheel” served it effectively, because it acquired a variety of notable covers over the following a long time, together with an eerie barroom-sing-along model with Dylan himself on 1975’s The Basement Tapes, an almost-discofied rendition from Siouxsie and the Banshees in 1987, and a 1968 U.Okay. hit cowl from Julie Driscoll with Brian Auger and the Trinity, re-recorded by Driscoll within the ’90s for the theme to British comedy collection Completely Fabulous. — ANDREW UNTERBERGER
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“The Form I am In” (Stage Fright)
Although musically “The Form I’m In” is considered one of The Band’s liveliest, most upbeat tunes, lyrically the 1970 tune from Stage Fright is a couple of unhappy sack down on his luck, contemporary out of 60 days in jail for “having no dough,” and lacking “his girl.” As Robertson writes, “Out of 9 lives/ I spent seven/ Now, how on this planet do you get to heaven?” Richard Manuel’s woebegone vocal supply is perfection. — M.N.
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“Someplace Down the Loopy River” (Robbie Robertson)
Featured on Robertson’s 1987 self-titled debut solo album, the percussive, rambling story has Robertson talking the verses and weaving considered one of his most cinematic and sexiest tales. Even when the lyrics are enigmatic, it doesn’t matter as a result of “Someplace Down the Loopy River” is all in regards to the really feel. Simply attempt to not shiver when he says, “You prefer it now, however you’ll be taught to find it irresistible later” (with “it” being open to all types of interpretation). Bolstered by The Bodeans’ Sam Llanas’ backing vocals and Manu Katche’s drumming, Robertson begins a fireplace that’s nonetheless smoldering by music’s finish. — M.N.
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“Up on Cripple Creek” (The Band)
Certainly one of The Band’s funkiest songs, due to Levon Helm’s swampy, yodeling vocals and Garth Hudson’s clavinet with wah-wah pedal, “Up on Cripple Creek,” from the group’s self-titled second album, can also be considered one of their most amusing, with Robertson’s lyrics about Little Bessie who’s “a drunkard’s dream if I ever did see one” and the double entendre of “when that little love of mine dips her doughnut in my tea.” Additionally noteworthy for the reference to Nineteen Fifties bandleader Spike Jones, whose goofy preparations Robertson admired. — M.N.
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“The Evening They Drive Previous Dixie Down” (The Band)
In some methods, it’s ironic that one of many biggest songs in regards to the American Civil Conflict was written by a Canadian. And whereas typically criticized resulting from its lyrics coming from the perspective of a defeated Accomplice soldier, the music is something however a glorification of the Confederacy, as a substitute a wide-eyed grappling with the aftermath of battle and the devastation of the land, and of numerous households, that it wrought. Levon Helm’s vocals drip with emotion, whereas the hook is among the most memorable within the traditional rock canon, with backing vocals that solely reinforce the rawness of the subject material at hand. It’s a real testomony to Robertson’s songwriting skill that he was capable of conjure such a nuanced music from such a brutal piece of one other nation’s historical past. — DAN RYS
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“The Weight” (Music From Large Pink)
Maybe The Band’s most recognizable music from Music From the Large Pink, the midtempo, ambling monitor, credited to Robertson and sung by Levon Helm and Rick Danko, is a traveler’s tackle arriving in a city referred to as Nazareth and his adventures therein. The characters talked about, together with Fanny, who’s taking the proverbial load off within the lyrics, had been allegedly primarily based on folks in Helm’s life and impressed by Robertson’s love of the flicks of Spanish filmmaker Luis Bunuel. The music peaked at No. 63 on the Scorching 100 for The Band, however Aretha’s model reached No. 19 in 1969. — M.N.
