From a Small Town...

I have spent too much time looking at my guitars over the past year. Jeff Beck passed away and I gave my Fender Stratocaster a workout. David Crosby passed and I had my acoustic ready and going through my fingers with my memories and skills. And then, after a day where I planned lessons, had online interviews for online material in my courses, found myself returning to a festival to celebrate its final day as a volunteer, I looked at my cellphone.

Robbie Robertson is dead.

80 years old…just like Mick Jagger (still kicking); just like my mother (still moving); just like many of those acts we now hear on classic rock radio stations. Some of my favourite albums are over thirty, forty, fifty and sixty years old this year (Nevermind, Metal Box, The Dark Side of the Moon, My Favourite Things, etc.)

Robbie Robertson’s career extends back to that earlier time when bands were heading north from the U.S. after realizing that there was a huge audience for the booming blues and rock and roll that was hard to come by in my native Canada. As a kid, Robbie was raised on the Six Nations Reserve, found his way to a guitar, made it his addiction, and then made it into the grinding circuit of bars and clubs where Ronnie Hawkins became his mentor. In the band The Hawks, Robbie would be entering a very interesting and hard-driving musical apprenticeship with a man who made him a promise that no teenage boy could reject:

“He said to me, ‘Son, you won’t make much money, but you’ll get more pussy than Frank Sinatra.’”

So, he played the circuit both here and in the south, gathering a real fan base that included John Hammond, the man who gave a certain Mr. Zimmerman a chance. When Mr. Dylan heard about them, and finally heard them, he hired them to make his transition to “electricity” (and to be fair, all music post-1930s is essentially electric no matter which instrument gets recorded). And yes, Robbie was on stage for this:

Now, this to me is one of the most interesting moments in Mr. Robertson’s life. There has been a lot of ink spilled on what it was like to work with Dylan and the newly formed group (soon to be called just The Band, an insult they appropriated to set themselves apart from the other sounds of the time). There were the tours where the half-acoustic, half-electric set would end with boos and objects thrown at the group, culminating in the infamous moment recorded for posterity when a fan screamed “Judas!” before Dylan instructed the band “to play fucking loud!” Then there is the transition to the countrified sound of their time in Woodstock heading right back to their roots in Americana and its myths (rather interesting for a band with four Canadians and one American). The early albums arrive with all of those hits: “Up on Cripple Creek”; “Across the Great Divide”; “Stage Fright”; “The Weight”. Then there is a break up, a final show that is the best concert (film) ever – “The Last Waltz” – and then…?

Well, this is where I first began to learn about his work. Starting in the 1980s, Robbie wrote a lot of music for different movies and created soundtracks that most people never acknowledged came from the man with that history. His longtime friendship with Martin Scorsese helped; his talent helped even more.

Then there was the solo work, starting with the eponymous album from the late 80s that had two of my favourite tracks on it: “Somewhere Down the Crazy River” and “Showdown at Big Sky”.

He did not sound like a man who wanted to rest and retire. There was always that hunger and fire in his work. I have not read his memoir, ''Testimony'', and I may not need to. The work is there and the sounds will always be in my memories.

And I don't have much else to say. I am too sad as I look over his career and consider writing another biographical piece about another musician who left us (and yes, for those of you who know, I am thinking of Sixto Rodriguez, too). If I hesitate to write too much about the people I admire, it is because the work is there; the books, music, film, paintings, words, actions, good and bad deeds that make up their lives.

I am just glad we had the chance to hear his sound, live in that world, and appreciate what one Canadian kid achieved with a guitar and a dream.

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You can find more poems, stories, and articles by Kendall Defoe on my Vocal profile. I complain, argue, provoke and create...just like everybody else.

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