I like to take note when notable people—notable to me—pass on (as we say), and, on August 9, it was Robbie Robertson, who wrote most of the great songs recorded by The Band. My fave will always be "The Weight." Don't really know what it's about, but, in college, an old-fashioned professor made us memorize—he would have said "learn by heart," suggesting it should be more an act of love than our academic duty—passages from Paradise Lost, including this one, which I only think of, in a compare-and-contrast manner, when trying to make out the lyrics to "The Weight":
But rise, let us no more contend, nor blame
Each other, blam'd enough elsewhere, but strive
In offices of Love, how we may light'n
Each others burden in our share of woe. . . .
Here’s Robertson, at age 77 looking hale with Ringo Starr just a few short years ago, during "high Covid," performing "The Weight" with a large ensemble of musicians from diverse locations around the globe:
Something about the song lends itself to a joyous sing-along, many voices, crowded stage, a pretty decent percentage of all the musical instruments ever invented—for example, this mass performance, which gains in poignancy on account of being intended as a tribute to Robertson's bandmate Levon Helm, who died in 2012:
Brittany Howard on the Crazy Chester verse—if that doesn't steal the show, it's a good show.
Robertson wrote at least two other songs that everyone knows without, however, knowing that they were written by Robbie Robertson: "Up on Cripple Creek" and—despite being a Canuck, Toronto-born—"The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down."
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