The band’s guitarist, Robbie Robertson, has passed away

Guitarist and songwriter Robbie Robertson, co-founder of The Band, died Wednesday (local time) in Los Angeles after a long struggle with his family, US media reports. Robertson was 80 years old. According to director Jared Levine, the Canadian-born recently collaborated with director Martin Scorsese on the soundtrack to his new movie, “Killers of the Flower Moon.”

The son of a Mohican mother, Robertson learned to play the guitar as a youth on the Six Nations reservation. The band famously supported Bob Dylan in the 1960s and later released albums of their own, including Music from Big Pink (1968) and The Last Waltz (1978). Robertson and his colleagues mixed blues music with rock, folk and country music. Songs like “The Night They Drive Old Dixie Down” and “Up on Cripple Creek” were among their hits.

Two years later, Scorsese documented the group’s legendary final concert in San Francisco in 1976 in his musical film, “The Last Waltz.” Robertson has been involved in many of the director’s projects, including films such as Raging Bull, Shutter Island, and The Irishman. In 2019, the documentary Once Were Brothers: Robbie Robertson and The Band about the musician’s life and work premiered at the Toronto Film Festival.