Dylan says Robbie’s death has left a vacancy in the world

Now the Band’s man is heading somewhere down his own crazy river

Bob Dylan has spoken about Robbie Robertson. Robbie was 80 years when he died and had been a friend of Bob’s since the Sixties.

In a statement Dylan said: ““This is shocking news. Robbie was a lifelong friend. His passing leaves a vacancy in the world.”

Robertson started working with Dylan in 1965 along the Hawks, Levon Helm, Richard Manuel, Rick Danko, and Garth Hudson.

Three years ago, he told how he missed getting on board with Dylan for his Rough and Rowdy project, Robbie said:  “I was working on the score to Martin Scorcese’s The Irishman and other projects. I said, ‘Right now, I’m in the middle of this stuff,’ and I think that he just felt like it was cooked and he needed to bring it out of the oven.”

But Robbie was a tough ol’ rock’n’roller, a fabulous song writer, king of the choppy guitar, chat show story-teller, charmer and joker.

On a personal note though,  more than anything, I admired him as the leader of The Band… the man who stuck it out with the amphetamine, howling, thin white clothes-horse Bob Dylan as they sped together round the world getting booed and accused of being talentless traitors.

Way back then, like Bob, Robbie was wired and tired, battered and bruised.  But the show must go on.

In reality, Robbie and the boys in The Band were as much a part of this  tour that literally electrified the world. The chief folky tried forlornly to pull the plug.

The Band’s music was sharp as knives, brittle as nails, screaming, thumping, ear pounding … Bob whirled and posed, patted his hair and harangued his audience while Robbie rocked and mugged. And smiled a lot, always his eyes on the new foppish leader of his band.

Robbie himself was behind such classics as The Weight, Up On Cripple Creek and The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down.

But perhaps, musically, Somewhere Down the Crazy River is the one I remember from way back when we all thought that people like Robbie Robertson would never die.

Crazy River had a swamp beat and a dark sensuous broken brick of a voice.

He wrote: “Yeah, I can see it now

The distant red neon shivered in the heat

I was feeling like a stranger in a strange land

You know, where people play games with the night

God, it was too hot to sleep.”

There’s Kerouac and Ginsberg in those 41 words,  stranger in a strange land is a thumbs up to science fiction ‘god’ Robert Heinlein … there’s Burroughs in there and a sniff of Mailer.

And Robbie kept on working almost to the end. Martin Scorsese was his big mate and they did a lot of things together after they forged a friendship on the set of The Last Waltz.

They went on to share a lot of laughs and bottles and even the same Hollywood front door at times for the next half a century, sharing credits on  The King of Comedy (1982), The Color of Money (1986), Casino (1995), Gangs of New York (2002), and  The Irishman (2019).

Robbie Robertson smiled and made his way down his own crazy river, had a laugh, told stories, sang, wrote, influenced, was admired and loved.

Robbie made a success of it all, ultimately

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