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Robbie Robertson performing on stage at the Crossroads Guitar Festival 2007. Photo by: Truejustice- Wikimedia.

10 Amazing Facts about Robbie Robertson

His full name is, Jaime Robbie Robertson. He was born 1943 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. His father’s name was Claygerman (a professional gambler) which later made him drop out of high school when he was sixteen.

Robbie Robertson has been a professional musician since 1959, when he began playing guitar with Ronnie Hawkins and the Hawks in juke joints and dives across North America.

Six years later, in front of thousands of fans, he was backing Bob Dylan as the folkie made the transition to electric. The Hawks were now referred to as the Band, and they were quickly creating their own powerful originals.

After another tour with Dylan, the Band decided to call it quits in 1976, and Robertson began working in movies, both acting and scoring soundtracks, while managing to stay behind the scenes for nearly 10 years.

1. Robbie’s relationships and personal life

In 1967, Robbie Robertson married Canadian journalist Dominique Bourgeois, with whom he has three children: Alexandra, Delphine, and Sebastian. The couple’s marriage was short-lived and ended the relationship.

2. The start of Robbie’s interest in guitar

Bob Dylan and The Band touring in Chicago, 1974 (Left to right: Rick Danko (bass), Robbie Robertson (guitar), Bob Dylan (guitar), Levon Helm(drums). Photo by: Jim Summaria- Wikimedia.

Robertson began playing guitar at the age of ten after being exposed to country music by his cousins. After a short tenure of Hawaiian lap steel lessons, the fifteen-year-old realized his future lay in music and began writing songs.

He produced a signature guitar sound that can be followed back to blues legends such as Muddy Waters. “I didn’t notice they were using slides, so I worked for years on creating a vibrato skill similar to a slide,” he told Guitar Player’s Steve Caraway.

“It all influenced me to create a distinct style.” Robertson dropped out of school at sixteen to join Hawkins as a bass player until the guitarist, Fred Carter, left a few months later.

He practiced nonstop for the next two years while the band toured Canada and rural America. As the teenager absorbed the abundance of Americana, he also emerged as one of the most distinctive players in the game.

“Robbie was the first guy in Canada or anywhere to get into white funk,” Hawkins told Rolling Stone’s Ben Fong-Torres. “They were always a couple of years ahead of their time.”

3. Robbie’s childhood and early teenage years

Jaime Royal Robertson was born on July 5, 1943, in Toronto, Canada, as the only child of Rose Marie and Alexander David Klegerman. His mother is Cayuga and Mohawk, and she worked in a jewelry factory, while his father was a professional gambler of Jewish descent.

His father was killed in a hit-and-run accident when he was a child, leaving his mother a widow. She later married James Patrick Robertson, a coworker who adopted him under his name.

The young Robertson honed his musical skills at her mother’s ancestral home in the Six Nations Reserve, where he began playing the guitar.

4. Robbie’s life before becoming famous

Once Were Brothers: Robbie Robertson and the Band is a Canadian documentary film, directed by Daniel Roher and released in 2019. Photo by: John Bauld- Wikimedia.

Before fame Robbie Robertson dropped out of school at the age of 16 to pursue music. Period leading up to that, he began performing locally with local bands and working at a traveling carnival, which influenced one of his later works, “Life Is A Carnival.”

During their tour, he also worked as a road crew member for Ronnie and the Hawks. He also recorded his first two songs, Someone Like You and Hey Boba Lou, while playing with the Hawks.

Following the tour, the Hawks and Robertson embarked on a tour with Bob Dylan, which elicited both positive and negative reactions from Dylan’s acoustic-loving fans. At the time, the Hawks’ lineup included Levon Helm, Rick Danko, Richard Manuel and Garth Hudson.

5. Robbie’s part in The Band

Just before to The Band’s debut, they started to work and teamed up with Dylan on a daily basis near his home in New York, which they dubbed the “Big Pink” due to its pink color. In August 1968, they released their debut album, Music from Big Pink, and were cited as musical influences by The Rolling Stones and Eric Clapton.

Whereas in The Band, Robbie Robertson wrote four songs for the album, two of which became band classics. The Temptations, Aretha Franklin, Jackie DeShannon, and The Supremes all covered Robertson’s work on The Weight and Chest Fever.

6. The Band was famous because of Robbie

Their self-titled second album included hits like The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down and Up on Cripple Creek. The following year, in 1970, their celebrity grew to the point where they were featured on the cover of Time magazine.

They went on to release other albums until the band split in 1976 due to the growing conflict over song writing credits, which caused Robertson and Helm to feud for years.

7. Robbie’s next step after The Band broke up

With such an organic stage persona in the film, Robertson’s upcoming stage was acting. He played Patch, a carnival hustler, in the film Carny and also contributed to the soundtrack. “It’s not a matter of me transitioning from rock and roll to movies,” he told Rolling Stone’s Chet Flippo.

“It’s a natural, steady transition. It’s all about storytelling, whether it’s in music, movies, or books.” Robertson and Scorcese collaborated on three more films: Raging Bull, King of Comedy, and The Color of Money. Robertson did a last-minute rush job for the lyrics to Eric Clapton’s hit “It’s in the Way That You Use It” for either.

8. Robbie Robertson became an author

He is also the author of several books, including Hiawatha and The Peacemaker, as well as Legends, Icons, and Rebels: Music That Changed the World, which he co-wrote with Jared Levine, Jim Guerinot, and his son, Sebastian. Testimony, Robertson’s autobiography, was released in November 2016 after taking him five years to complete. 

9. More movies he has directed in

After The Band disbanded, Robbie Robertson went into production, where he was responsible for Beautiful Noise, Neil Diamond’s 1976 album, and even ventured into the film industry in the early 1980s.

He appeared in the film Carny alongside Jodie Foster and Gary Busey and helped with the musical production. Following his work on Carny, he worked with Martin Scorsese on the 1980 film Raging Bull, as well as on Scorsese’s other films such as The King of Comedy and The Color of Money.

10. Robbie’s solo albums

Robbie Robertson’s star on Canada’s Walk of Fame. Photo by: Tabercil- Wikimedia.

Robbie Robertson’s first solo album, referred to as Robbie Robertson, was released in October of 1987. Rolling Stone magazine named it one of the “100 Best Albums of the 1980s.”

The album was nominated for Best Rock/Vocal Album at the Grammy Awards, as well as Best Male Vocalist of the Year, Album of the Year, and Producer of the Year at the 1989 Juno Awards in Canada.

Storyville (1991), Music for Native Americans (1994), Contact from the Underworld of Redboy (1998), and How to Become Clairvoyant are among his other solo albums (2011).