I was stunned by Robbie Robertson’s death.

 

Jeffrey St. Clair <<

+ I was stunned by Robbie Robertson’s death. He always seemed younger than he was. I watched his recent documentary (Once Were Brothers) a few weeks  back and didn’t pick up on how sick he must’ve been at the time. The film didn’t strike me as a farewell, but a summary of the varied chapters of his career so far. I interviewed Robertson by phone a couple of years ago for a book I’ve been working on about John Trudell. His voice sounded a little rougher than usual, but his mind was sharp and his wit still caustic. Robertson openly credited Trudell as a major inspiration for his eponymous 1987 album. Beneath the artifice of the production, you can hear the influence in the spoken word delivery and Native American themes–even if the lyrics seem somewhat strained next to John’s and the vocals themselves lack Trudell’s urgency. From the rear-view mirror that record–which came out the year after AKA Graffiti Man–seems almost cinematic and perhaps signaled Robertson’s own attraction to the financial, if not artistic, possibilities of Hollywood…

Robertson was there to hold Dylan’s hand as he “went electric.” But as the music drove forward toward punk in the 70s, Robertson seemed to retreat deeper and deeper into the past. After all, it was this Canadian with indigenous roots who pretty much gave birth, for better or worse, to the genre of music now marketed as Americana. Go listen to “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down.” Robbie may still be plugged into his Marshall amp, but the song unfurls as an anthem for the Lost Cause crowd. It’s a wonder it became so popular with the radical rockers and cultural leftists who worshiped at the feet of Dylan. I still cherish the immediacy and exuberance of “The Basement Tapes” and the haunting rusticity of “Music from Big Pink,” but The Band, propelled by Robertson’s slashing guitar attack, never sounded hipper or more daring than in those first live gigs with Dylan, dragging him along with them into the Now, for a few moments at least, until withdrawing back, as so many of the Sixties Generation did, into an idyllic sanctuary of the past…