Why Robbie Robertson Never Reunited With the Band

Robbie Robertson did rather a lot after ending his time in the Band in 1976: 5 solo albums, 20-odd movie soundtracks, a memoir, a documentary about the Band and overseeing each the movie and soundtrack for The Last Waltz in addition to archival field units from the group’s vaults.

The one factor he did not do was play with the Band ever once more.

The Band final carried out as a quintet on March 1, 1978, for the three-song encore of bassist Rick Danko’s solo present at the Roxy in Los Angeles. Robertson’s bandmates – Danko, Levon Helm, Garth Hudson and Richard Manuel – then started performing once more as the Band in 1983, pointedly with out the singer and guitarist who was thought to be the group’s chief. The motive was easy and mutual.

“I just didn’t want to,” Robertson informed this author throughout the fall of 1987, as he launched his self-titled first solo album. “We called it The Last Waltz … and to me that was it. The end. It was over. To come out a few years later and say, ‘Hey, just kidding’ or ‘We’ve changed our mind,’ that would be wrong, to me at least. It would be a cheat.” (This was in an period earlier than long-term farewells grew to become the norm.)

Robertson did spend time pondering what he wished to do after the Band, which is why it took him greater than a decade to make Robbie Robertson whereas exploring the movie world, largely together with his buddy and The Last Waltz director Martin Scorsese and on soundtracks for Raging Bull, The Color of Money, The King of Comedy and Chuck Berry: Hail, Hail Rock ‘n’ Roll. “I wanted to experiment in different areas and spend some time with my family,” he defined. “I wanted to get a little, uh, normal … and being in a band is anything but normal.”

As it seems, nevertheless, at the least a kind of bandmates didn’t need him there anyway. “I said, ‘Let’s not invite him,'” Helm wrote in his 1993 memoir This Wheel’s on Fire. In interviews and the guide, Helm expressed appreciable animosity towards Robertson, who he felt was unduly portrayed as the Band’s mastermind and sometimes contended the guitarist absconded with songwriting credit Helm felt he was due. “I think Rick did call Robbie, and he passed. He told Rick he was afraid when we did The Last Waltz that people would think it was one of those phony showbiz retirements and that we’d be back with the big comeback someday, and he just didn’t want to do that.”

Watch the Band Perform ‘Don’t Do It’

Despite Helm’s bitterness, different Band members expressed hope that Robertson would finally return to the fold. “I’m sure he’s going to eat those words,” Danko stated in 1983. “I’m sure it’s going to take him longer than he wants to get involved, but I think he’s going to want to get back to it in time.” Manuel added that “everybody has to go see [The Last Waltz] again and pay attention. No one even said the band broke up. Robbie was the only one who said he was through with the road.”

A Band with out Robertson was considered in some quarters as invalid, however Robertson didn’t intervene with the group’s resumption. “People say they might blemish what the Band had done as a group, even that it’s sacrilegious,” he informed Band biographer Barney Hoskins. “I don’t think people should write about it that way. I mean, we’re not talking about Matthew, Mark, Luke and John here. These are just some guys in a rock ‘n’ roll band who miss it, you know? I hope they have a real good time and don’t stay up too late.”

The Band’s reunion would run till 1999, with three new albums and soldiering by means of the deaths of Manuel (in 1986) and Danko (1999). Helm died in 2012. Robertson, who died in 2023, informed his story in the 2019 documentary Once Were Brothers: Robbie Robertson and The Band, and as late as 2021 he expressed disappointment about the acrimony Helm felt towards him.

“That was so sad. Levon just got this idea that I had hijacked the narrative of the Band and never got over it,” Robertson informed UCR whereas selling the field set reissue of 1970’s Stage Fright. Robertson did go to Helm throughout his final days and finally stated that “Levon was probably the most consistent of all of us in the group as far as every night he came out and he played his ass off and he sang these songs that I wrote for him. I knew that I was writing songs that Levon could sing better than anybody. He would just blow my mind every night with how much music was in his body and in his soul. Those songs have been covered a lot over the years, too, and nobody has ever sang them as good as Levon. It made me so proud to be able to do that for Levon … no matter how he felt about me.”