Acclaimed songwriter and guitarist instrumental in creation of Malibu Park’s Shangri-La Studios
Rock star Robbie Robertson is dead at 80. The acclaimed songwriter, guitarist, close collaborator with Bob Dylan and Martin Scorsese, had an extraordinary musical career that spanned more than 60 years.
When Dylan first arrived in New York as a fresh-faced folk singer, he spun tall tales of running away from home as a boy to join the circus. Robertson actually did work in carnivals and freak shows as a youngster, an experience that formed the basis for the 1980 movie “Carny,” which Robertson produced, co-wrote, and starred in opposite Jodie Foster and Malibu’s Gary Busey.
Born Jaime Royal Robertson to a Cayuga and Mohawk mother who was raised on the Six Nations Reserve southwest of Toronto, he learned guitar during frequent childhood visits to the reserve. According to Robertson’s memoir, he learned as a teenager that his biological father was a Jewish gambler. At 16, Robertson hit the road with Ronnie Hawkins, an Arkansan rockabilly star based in Ontario who was instrumental in the development of rock and roll in Canada. When Hawkins moved north, his touring band stayed behind, with the exception of his Arkansas-raised drummer, Levon Helm.
Hawkins’ backing band, The Hawks, quickly added southwest Ontarians Rick Danko on bass, Richard Manuel on piano and Garth Hudson on organ. The five left Hawkins in 1964 to form a quintet that would ultimately be known as The Band.
In 1965 after Dylan “went electric” at the Newport Folk Festival, Robertson and Helm backed Dylan at his second and third electric concerts in Forest Hills and the Hollywood Bowl, and Robertson accompanied Dylan to Nashville to work on the album “Blonde on Blonde.” At the time, Dylan described Robertson as “the only mathematical guitar genius I’ve ever run into who does not offend my intestinal nervousness with his rearguard sound.” The Hawks backed Dylan on his famed 1966 tour, later chronicled in Martin Scorsese’s “No Direction Home” — minus Helm, who quickly tired of the boos that often greeted the electric portion of the show.
After Dylan’s 1966 motorcycle accident, the four remaining Hawks were kept on retainer and over time followed Dylan to Woodstock in upstate New York. Together, they played old American folk songs and worked on Dylan demos, sessions that became known as The Basement Tapes and that were largely recorded at “Big Pink” — the house in nearby Saugerties where Danko, Manuel and Hudson were living.
After Helms’ return and the rechristening of The Band, the group’s 1968 debut album “Music from Big Pink” shocked rock and roll with its decidedly unpsychedelic amalgamation of folk, country, blues, R&B, soul, Cajun and New Orleans influences, a style that decades later would be termed Americana. Robertson penned four of the album’s 11 tracks, including “The Weight,” listed as number 41 of Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.
By the time of 1969’s eponymous sophomore effort, Robertson had emerged as the de facto leader, and was sole writer or co-writer of every track, which included his “Up on Cripple Creek” and “The Night They Drive Old Dixie Down.”
In the early ’70s, encouraged by David Geffen, Robertson moved to the Malibu Colony, initially renting movie director Sam Peckinpah’s former house, and over time convinced his bandmates to move to Malibu as well. They backed Dylan again on the Malibu resident’s 1974 “Planet Waves” and subsequent tour, documented in the same year’s live album “Before the Flood.”
In his memoir “Testimony,” Robertson recounts spotting a body at the tide line from Danko’s Broad Beach home, and as they dragged the body up on the bank, they realized it was a passed-out Keith Moon, drummer of The Who.
Looking for a new “clubhouse” in which The Band could write and record in a relaxed atmosphere, they found Shangri-La, a Morning View property so named for its original owner, the Mexican-American actress Margo, who had starred in “Lost Horizon.” Outfitted as a recording studio, Shangri-La is now owned and operated by Malibu resident and celebrated producer Rick Rubin.
By 1976, Robertson had determined to end touring, and The Band’s star-studded farewell Thanksgiving concert was immortalized as “The Last Waltz,” a best-selling album and film that marked the start of Robertson’s long collaboration with director Scorsese, from 1980’s “Raging Bull” to “Killers of the Flower Moon,” scheduled to be released this autumn.
In addition to his collaborations with Scorsese, Robertson released several acclaimed solo albums and supervised The Band reissues as well as 2019’s documentary, “Once Were Brothers: Robbie Robertson and the Band.”