Robbie Robertson has died | Hacker News Reader

Robbie Robertson has died

nytimes.com

149 pointskaraokeyoga54 comments

Seems most commenters know him from the Band, so I thought I'd share how I know him instead since I seem to be in the minority.

When I was a kid my father gave me a copy of "Music for the Native Americans"[0], an album he put together in collaboration with several Native American artists as a soundtrack for a documentary. It's my favorite album ever written. I know that's just because I grew up listening to it so it rooted itself somewhere deep in my brain during my formative years, but I hope someone else might find it now and hear something beautiful in it too.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_for_The_Native_Americans....

If he did that today it would be called "cultural appropriation" and his reputation would be trashed. But thankfully he did it years ago so we've still got a chance to hear this sort of rare music.

His mother was First Nations

His mother was Cayuga and Mohawk. I fail to understand why he would be accused of cultural appropriation? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robbie_Robertson

If he wasn't native American?

Okay, but he was, so.... this comment is pretty empty. And even if he wasn't, he made this music in collaboration with First Nations musicians. I don't think there's a taboo against people working with each other who aren't of the same ethnic background. Cultural appropriation accusations usually come up when someone who has nothing to do with a certain ethnic background starts drawing on it for something - and even then those accusations are often pretty empty.

Thanks for the recommendation. Just listened to it this morning. Really beautiful album.

Sad.

If I had to choose the greatest song ever written, I would not hesitate to go with The Weight. The version [0] from The Waltz is especially brilliant.

[0] - https://youtu.be/q-w9OclUnns

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCSzL5-SPHM (better resolution)

I just love this. Scorsese’s camera moves - the way he swoops in behind Mavis and then slowly comes back around her as she starts to soar. The way he lights up Danko for the start of his solo bit. It’s just a beautifully put together document of a great performance. It was shot separately on a soundstage, making it essentially an early music video, and a great one at that. That Robertson and Scorsese were still working together right to the end just makes it all the more poignant and wondrous.

In Once Were Brothers Scorcese tells how he planned out the shooting for the whole concert. One thing you might not pick up on: there are NO shots of the audience at all.

Another nice version, although the one you linked is my favorite: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ph1GU1qQ1zQ

That's a pretty dope version as well. I do like Marcus King a lot.

Also, nice username. ;)

No better clapping than Mavis'

She also does an awesome version of For What It’s Worth

That little vocal flourish she does after "...stick around", and her expression, sends me into outer space.

in Once Were Brothers they said when they played it for Dylan he looked at Robbie, disbelieving, and says, "You wrote that?"

His first solo album is one of my favorites.

His solo debut and Storyville are a perfect one-two punch.

Played The Band's Academy of Music performance [0] last night when I got the news. It's right up there with The Last Waltz. Great and timeless music. Hell some of my favorite Grateful Dead performances were covers of his music. RIP Robbie. Enjoy your weekends fellow heady folks (~);)

[0] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cNtcW2LqveU&list=OLAK5uy_khf...

My favorite music lore is the Dead, The Band, Dylan and Lennon interplayed.

- the The Dead covering Dylan live consistently

- the Dead’s weight covers over the years. I’m fairly Brent Mydland’s last-ish live song was the Weight and he sang the “I’ve gotta go but my friends can stick around” verse. Chilling but feels right.

- Jerry and the Dead supporting Dylan with a joint tour in the 80’s when Dylan was a washed up alcoholic

- Jerry’s got a great Dear Prudence cover that I believe yoko said it was how the song was meant to be played. Plus a bunch of other JCB/Dylan covers.

True musicians!

Greatest live album of all time IMHO

I was there. It started three hours late. They showed a samurai movie with subtitles while we waited. My GF was sick from all the smoke. Dylan seemed drunk. But it is a fantastic album!

Wasn't that around the time Dylan was having lots of problems with drink?

I have always thought that Dylan showed up drunk, and they started late, so he could sober up a bit. It was New Year's Eve, 1971.

RIP, also kudos for one of the most savage Twitter reply burns in history: https://twitter.com/Steven_Hyden/status/946951877635268608

RIP

‘Up on Cripple Creek’ was my first explicit introduction to them. After buying their 1969 self titled album on a whim, my jaw dropped from hearing the original sample from GangStarr’s “Beyond Comprehension” off their 1990 ‘Step in the Arena’. That isolated drum roll and guitar lick is so mystical. I could listen to those brief 3 seconds on loop for hours.

Great quote: Speaking of the Band in the 2020 documentary "Once Were Brothers," Bruce Springsteen said, "It's like you've never heard them before and like they'd always been there."

Similarly, this was a great line from the LA Times obituary for Robertson:

>As the Band’s chief songwriter and grand conceptualist, Robertson turned old American folklore into modern myths, a knack that gave a timeless quality to such songs as “The Weight” and “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down”; it was as if he had unearthed the songs, not written them.

RIP. Recently heard this interview with him, telling a story not actually about himself, but still revealing a lot about himself and what making blues music was like at that time.

Robbie Robertson Talks About Sonny Boy Williamson (Language Warning) https://youtu.be/90-O6c20PLk

The Last Waltz is fantastic. Rest in peace.

+1 -- nothing better.

"Now I don't mind choppin' wood. And I don't care if the money's no good."

RIP.

"... they should never ever have taken the very best"

:-(

Highly recommend checking out the Levon Helm documentary from about 10 years ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bMCurMyP4n8

Robertson's obituary alluded to questions over songwriting credits. That came up in Helm's 2012 documentary and autobiography - he thinks he and the other members of The Band were cheated. Robertson refuted that a few years back, and quite forcefully:

To this day, on The Band's songs, I share the publishing and songwriting credit with Levon. The other guys said they wanted to sell their part of the publishing. When we started out, everyone was supposed to write songs. [When they didn't] I thought they were being lazy. But some people can write songs, and some can't. Levon didn't write songs. I gave him credit on some songs because he was around. Garth was a great musician, but he couldn't write. Ringo Starr doesn't write songs. Charlie Watts doesn't write songs, and they don't share publishing credit with the other guys in their groups. After 16 years together, Levon never once mentioned songwriting. When it came up, I was generous about it.

https://www.salon.com/2020/05/23/robbie-robertson-the-band-o...

He was an extremely influential artist and his time with The Band was legendary of course - but his solo work is also certainly worth investigating especially "Contact from the Underworld of Redboy".

“Somewhere Down the Crazy River” from his first, self-titled album is sublime.

They interviewed Robbie on the Broken Record podcast a while back where he told his story. Great listen if you're interested: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/rewind-robbie-robertso...

my fav era with him was with Bob Dylan, 1966 -

here’s a pretty niche video with both of them playing a Dylan song that never made an official album release

On A Rainy Afternoon

https://youtu.be/qE3owtjQmSc

awesome guitarist / RIP

Bob Dylan talked about how he loved working with him because he’s the rare guitarist that had all the chops but didn’t need to show them off.

As an example, here’s a clip of him playing with Clapton. He takes over right when Clapton’s strap slips off his guitar and they go back and forth shredding.

https://youtu.be/1WDmMWF83x4

However, if you listen to him with Dylan or The Band, the guitar parts are always simple and about fitting the song.

That's a pretty famous clip -- it's from The Last Waltz, if I'm not mistaken -- but I first heard it on Clapton's 1988 career-retrospective box set Crossroads. Back then, the video was harder to come by, so my fellow guitar-nerds and I didn't actually realize the hows or whys of the handoff until years later.

You can actually SEE that the strap was in a precarious position in the clip (it's clear at like 45s). Straps in that era didn't have strap locks. It'd just be a chunky post in the guitar, and a leather tab at the end of your strap you'd force over it. In a normal orientation, it'd be secure ENOUGH, but as shown it's been flipped over, which means the weight of the guitar itself is pushing on it in a way that will absolutely cause the guitar to slip out of it.

There's a free movie, Once Were Brothers you should watch, for his biography.

RIP to an absolute legend. There’s an excellent doc on Netflix rn.

...the wind just kind of pushed me this way.

So many greats leaving the stage now, who I wonder replaces them?

It would be nice if the post title would include the article title, I didn't know who was Robbie Robertson, what they did, and why it might be relevant.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

"Robbie Robertson, Guitarist and Songwriter With the Band, Dies at 80"

You mean like this perhaps:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37072982

The HN software tries to "auto-correct" and so "The Band" becomes "the Band". Incorrect.

You can edit HN titles after submitting them, and it won't auto-correct when editing.

If you catch it quick, yes. But it's quite easy to get locked out of editing soon after submission.

Well, if we're going by the news guidelines then most obituaries mostly fall foul of the principle:

> "Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, or celebrities, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon"

It feels a bit tasteless to expand further on this, especially in this thread, so I typically just flag and move on.

> his biological father was a Jewish professional gambler named Alexander David Klegerman, who had been killed in a hit-and-run accident before she met James Robertson

Killing someone and fleeing the scene isn't something that happens by accident.

You can hit somebody accidentally, and then run from the accident intentionally.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com