The Band’s Robbie Robertson Dead at 80

Robbie Robertson, songwriter and lead guitarist for legendary rock group The Band, is useless … TMZ has confirmed.

Sources near Robbie inform us he died Wednesday in Los Angeles after battling prostate most cancers for a couple of 12 months. We’re advised he’d been doing okay, just lately, however on Tuesday he advised his spouse he wasn’t feeling nicely, and she or he took him to a hospital.

We’re advised his spouse obtained a name from the hospital within the early hours of Wednesday informing her Robbie had handed.

Robbie’s group first shaped in Canada within the late ’50s as The Hawks — together with the late Levon Helm and Rick Danko — however they gained extensive notoriety once they backed Bob Dylan on his 1966 tour … and after that launched their very own profession as The Band.

Robbie wrote a few of The Band’s most iconic hits like “The Weight,” and “Up On Cripple Creek.”

He additionally had a solo profession that included the 1987 hit tune, “Somewhere Down the Crazy River.”

The Band was the topic of Martin Scorsese‘s basic 1978 movie, “The Last Waltz” … documenting their ultimate present. They have been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1994.

Robbie was 80.