Dry summer/then comes the fall

“You’re still there, huh? We’re gonna do one more song, and that’s it.” His golden, overdriven guitar tone[1] was perfect. He’d already bettered Dylan in some respects; why not trying out Marvin at something way after midnight?

There’s a thing about certain Canadians (two’s a company; three’s a crowd; more: that’s a trend), A few tend to write better songs about the United States than Americans can. Familiarity breeds contempt, or something like it, but from pastoral documentation, à la Neil Young[2] and Joni Mitchell, to the psychodramaticism of The Weeknd and poptimism of Carly Rae Jepsen, some friends from The North hold the mirror up to Americans better than we can do unto ourselves. 

You wanted a hit? Baby, maybe, he just did hits: “The Weight,” “Up On Cripple Creek,” and “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down” fit the bill. Having backed The Hawk, Ronnie Hawkins, and then Bob Dylan, Jaime Royal Robertson, who died on Wednesday at 80, ran the gamut of roles in early rock bands. Later, he’d end up having to try to save his bandmates, and then himself. He knew how to get the best out of those around him, when the bells were ringing.

A descendant of partial Cayuga and Mohawk lineages, Robertson set out trying to find himself, backward and without direction beyond the AM radio he’d fall asleep to at night in Cabbagetown, Toronto. He found his own experience in the truths of others. Being in bar bands gave him the chops; being poached to better bar bands gave him versatility.

Perhaps idealistically, given Bob Dylan’s example, Robertson made what he saw, in exploring the United States, subject matter for his playing style, absorbing Motown and New Orleans into a singularly funky yet precise picking style, invoking country, blues and big band/jazz traditions that would benefit him later on.

Treble-striking leads permeating, he joined Ronnie Hawkins’s crew, a tight touring band with looser aspirations: to carry themselves as far as they would go.. In Levon Helm, drummer with The Hawks, as they were then called, Robbie recognized a vessel through which the sounds could shoot. By 1961, the classic lineup of what would become The Band had formed: this is the start of what Robbie talks about when later discussing, very blurrily, “the road,” and the people it killed along the way: Hendrix, Joplin, Morrison.

Any of the most treasonous guitar sounds from Bob Dylan’s 1966 tour of Europe likely belong to Robertson. The natural reverb that haunts every strum of his Telecaster is an acidic counterpoint to Dylan’s abrasive voice and sometimes abusive lyrics. Dylan was harsh, but Robbie could strike back. Soon, he would do just that.

Robbie Robertson wrote four songs out of eleven on The Band’s first record, “The Weight” among them. He also wrote the nonsensical lyrics to “Chest Fever,” but the organ part that many hold onto is a Garth Hudson[3] joint; Hudson was the glue that kept The Band together in its earliest days and held strong through its fractures.

A notable asshole in rock and roll, an achievement on its own given his peers (not the least of which: Dylan, their greatest champion and an asylum unto himself), Robertson nevertheless wrote several of the greatest songs in the English language – “The Weight”[4], overwrought though it may be, is a notch in his belt that any songwriter can turn to and only look at in a fit of jealousy. Allegedly, Dylan was blown away when he heard it for the first time, asking who wrote it.

SNL skits, Easy Rider, whatever: you and probably everyone you know is familiar with “The Weight.” It’s a barroom singalong that loses the plot, but cliches become cliches for a reason. Not unlike Dylan writing “Love Is A Four-Letter Word” and forgetting about it, I’m sure that he knew he didn’t write “The Weight” when he first heard it; it’s that Robertson stared Dylan in the face and summed it all up, the folk rock ethos he was supposed to have been actualizing ahead of the motorcycle accident, that gives Robbie that seat at that table. Of course, no Band is an island, and if the remainder of players involved hadn’t matched him, it would’ve been just another song.

By the time of the second Band record, Robertson had seized all songwriting duties, perhaps out of what he thought was necessity that gave way to neglect – he has at least partial credit on all twelve tracks on the album. Drawing from sources so close to, and so far beyond, himself Robertson recognized humanistic tendencies wherever he saw them.

When Manuel started to decline, Robbie dutifully picked up the slack. It was not without protest: Levon Helm facilitated the resources and atmosphere (as well as, of course, providing the voice, his Arkansas scratch providing the necessary twang) to lay “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down” to wax. Frankly, there ain’t no other way Robbie comes into contact with the nomenclature that Levon turned him on to. The Band was The Band because Robbie gave a fuck when it had to be his turn to give a fuck[5]. Helm deserved a songwriting credit on that and many others; Robbie had already gamed the group into a contract lucrative for him. It was an early, notable showcase in predatory practices that have dominated and destroyed popular music. Nevertheless, good music, both influenced by the Band and not, persists.

During one of my family’s annual viewings of The Last Waltz, my mom once said that Robbie was, and I quote, “The most normal-looking one” of the interviewees that Scorsese awoke in the middle of the morning to shoot pool, or talk jazz, or simply to chat: namely, the members of The Band, who’d be carrying stories about Tin Pan Alley or Sonny Boy Williamson.

These interviews were meant to give context to The Last Waltz, probably still my vote for the greatest concert movie ever[6], but they’d make the players end up looking bloated and rock-pop unemployable by the time the movie actually came out, two years later in 1978.

Robbie’s mannerisms in that film don’t make you want to like him. When he slings himself near the mic during Rick Danko showcase “It Makes No Difference,” it’s as impossible to identify his voice as on record. In his defense, though, he wrote one of the most heartbreaking songs I’ve ever heard[7], complete with a sax solo worthy of Clarence Clemens[8] that Hudson executes brilliantly.

A notorious starfucker, Robbie got Neil Diamond involved, with the rest of The Band hated, but he also brought Van Morrison into the fold for the movie. It’s really tough to defend the first decision when the second led to perhaps the best guest performance in The Last Waltz.

Post-Last Waltz, Robertson worked with Scorsese, with whom he shared a respect for their respective crafts. Probably the best American songwriter ever despite being, well, you know, of the maple leaf, he knew what people could feel, in so many different colors. Soundtrack work suited him; it might’ve robbed his erstwhile bandmates. After all, he wrote those songs, right?

Perhaps he had Dylan’s ear better than anybody. Maybe Dylan used him. Does it matter? Either way, Robbie Robertson won, reaching the peak with a foot steadily placed on the ground. Put that load right on me.

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[1] You’re no stranger to this, but: Robertson’s gilded Strat tone on the Marvin Gaye cover of “Don’t Do It” is a cuttingly clean knife through smooth caramelized butter. It was only the first song!

[2] Greatest protest song, another year running.

[3] The oldest member of The Band, as well as the one who sold himself to the cause in order to be paid for musical instruction, Hudson remains. Garth Hudson knew where it landed; as of Wednesday, he is The Band’s sole survivor.

[4] Quick aside: Standing in my parents’ kitchen one night in 2008 with a couple of friends of mine after I had played with the – get ready – Fort Mill Blues Club, my dad declared, upon request from ~not me~, that it was the greatest song ever written. Forgiving the Bud Lights that likely went into such a proclamation at the time, fifteen years later, I continue to have a troublesome time coming up with reliable counterpoints.

[5] Do you think Robbie comes up with Lake Charles as a destination vacation without Levon Helm? Please.

[6] I see you, The Big Suit. STAY IN LINE.

[7] Probably THE one, but~

[8] Yup: Courtesy of Garth Hudson.