MOVIE MUSIC UK

Guitarist, songwriter, producer and film composer Robbie Robertson died in Los Angeles on August 9, 2023, at the age of 80, following a year-long battle with prostate cancer.

Best known as the principal songwriter and guitarist of The Band, Robertson also developed one of cinema’s most enduring musical partnerships with director Martin Scorsese, working as composer, music producer and soundtrack curator on films ranging from Raging Bull and The Color of Money to The Irishman and Killers of the Flower Moon.

Jaime Royal Robertson was born in Toronto, Canada, on July 5, 1943. His mother was of Mohawk and Cayuga ancestry and had been raised on the Six Nations of the Grand River reserve, where Robertson spent considerable time as a child and first encountered the communal music-making that remained important to him throughout his life.

As a teenager Robertson joined Ronnie Hawkins’s backing group, the Hawks, which eventually broke away and accompanied Bob Dylan during his controversial electric tours of 1965 and 1966. Renamed The Band, the group released Music from Big Pink in 1968 and became one of the most influential acts of its era. Robertson wrote or co-wrote classics including “The Weight,” “Up on Cripple Creek” and “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down,” helping establish the mixture of rock, country, blues and folk that later became known as Americana.

Robertson’s relationship with cinema began in earnest when Scorsese filmed The Band’s 1976 farewell concert for The Last Waltz (1978). Their friendship subsequently developed into a creative collaboration lasting more than four decades. Robertson helped shape the soundtrack of Raging Bull (1980), selecting and arranging music rather than supplying a conventional original score, and soon became one of Scorsese’s most trusted musical advisers.

He also became increasingly involved in filmmaking himself. Robertson co-wrote, produced, acted in and contributed music to Carny (1980), working on the soundtrack with veteran composer Alex North. For Scorsese’s The King of Comedy (1982) he served as music producer and wrote “Between Trains,” while The Color of Money (1986) marked his first substantial dramatic underscore for the director. Working with jazz arranger Gil Evans, Robertson combined blues, rock and atmospheric instrumental writing while also assembling a soundtrack featuring artists including Eric Clapton and Willie Dixon.

Over subsequent decades Robertson became an integral part of Scorsese’s musical process, contributing to Casino, Gangs of New York, The Departed, Shutter Island, The Wolf of Wall Street and Silence. His role varied from film to film: sometimes composing original material, sometimes producing recordings, and frequently helping Scorsese locate existing music capable of becoming part of the dramatic fabric of a scene.

Robertson returned more substantially to original scoring with The Irishman (2019), writing a restrained, blues-inflected score dominated by harmonica and low-key instrumental textures alongside the film’s extensive period songs. His final collaboration with Scorsese was Killers of the Flower Moon (2023). Drawing partly on memories of the music he heard at Six Nations, Robertson created a dark, persistent mixture of blues, percussion, guitar and Indigenous musical influences for the story of the Osage murders. The film was dedicated to his memory.

Robertson died before Killers of the Flower Moon was released, but the score subsequently earned him posthumous nominations for both the Academy Award and Golden Globe for Best Original Score. It was his first Oscar nomination and provided a fitting conclusion to his long cinematic partnership with Scorsese.