Robbie Robertson knows he made the right decision, said Stephen Rodrick in Rolling Stone. The singer and guitarist, 67, is still blamed for breaking up The Band, the legendary rock group he formed with Levon Helm, Rick Danko, Garth Hudson, and Richard Manuel in the mid 1960s. Back in 1978, Robertson made the unilateral decision that, after 16 years, The Band should stop touring, leading to its eventual demise. Every member of the group, including Robertson, was struggling with drugs or alcohol or both, and they no longer got along. “Our musical ability was disappearing before my eyes,” he says. “You’re in a place and it’s on fire and you say, ‘I’ve got to get out of here.’”
The concert film The Last Waltz, which documents The Band’s final show, reveals the members as emaciated, wan specters. “Richard would say, ‘Listen, my hands are shaking, I need to have some medicine so my hands won’t shake.’”
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
-
US won its war on 'murder hornets,' officials saySpeed Read The announcement comes five years after the hornets were first spotted in the US
-
California declares bird flu emergencySpeed Read The emergency came hours after the nation's first person with severe bird flu infection was hospitalized
-
Trump, Musk sink spending bill, teeing up shutdownSpeed Read House Republicans abandoned the bill at the behest of the two men
