1967–1968: Music from Big Pink In late 1967, Dylan left to record his next album,
John Wesley Harding (1967). After recording the basic tracks, Dylan asked Robertson and Garth Hudson about playing on the album to fill out the sound. Robertson liked the starkness of the sound and recommended Dylan leave the tracks as they were. Over the course of the "Basement Tapes" period, the group had developed a sound of their own. Grossman went to Los Angeles to shop the group to a major label, securing a contract with
Capitol Records. The resulting album,
Music from Big Pink, was released in August 1968. The group called itself The Band, and
Music from Big Pink was its debut
studio album. Robertson was the principal songwriter and lead guitarist of the Band. He wrote four of the songs on
Music From Big Pink, including "The Weight", "Chest Fever", "Caledonia Mission", and "To Kingdom Come". He is listed in the songwriting credits as "J.R. Robertson". He sang lead vocals on the track "To Kingdom Come"; he did not sing on another Band song released to the public until "Knockin' Lost John" on 1977's
Islands. it did not fare as well on the American charts, initially stalling at No. 63. Nevertheless, "The Weight" has since become the Band's best known song. It has been covered by many artists, appeared in dozens of films and documentaries, and has become a staple of American rock music.
1969–1973: Expansion and acclaim The Band began performing regularly in spring 1969, with their first live dates as the Band taking place at the
Winterland Ballroom in San Francisco. Their most notable performances that year were at the 1969
Woodstock Festival and the UK
Isle of Wight Festival with Bob Dylan in August. Robertson wrote or co-wrote each song on the album.
The Band works as a loose concept album of
Americana themes, and was instrumental in the creation of the Americana music genre. The song from
The Band that had the strongest cultural influence was "
The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down". The song was written by Robertson, who spent about eight months working on it. The lyrics tell of the last days of the
American Civil War, portraying the suffering of the protagonist, Virgil Caine, a poor white Southerner. Robertson said he had the music to the song in his head and would play the chords over and over on the piano but had no idea what the song was to be about. Later, the concept came to him and he researched the subject with help from Helm, a native of
Arkansas. The song is included in the
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's "500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll" and
Time magazine's All-Time 100. On November 2, 1969, the Band appeared on the
Ed Sullivan Show, one of only two television appearances they made. The Band rented The
Woodstock Playhouse in Woodstock, New York with the intent of recording a new live album there, but the city council voted against it, so they recorded on location, but without an audience. Robertson handled most of the songwriting duties as before. These sessions resulted in the Band's third album,
Stage Fright.
Stage Fright became the Band's highest-charting album, peaking at No. 5 on September 5 and staying on the Billboard Top 40 for 14 weeks.
Rock of Ages peaked at No. 6, and remained in the Top 40 for 14 weeks. With over 600,000 people in attendance, the festival set a record for "Pop Festival Attendance" in the
Guinness Book of World Records. The record was first published in the 1976 edition of the book. In October 1973, the Band released an album of
cover songs entitled
Moondog Matinee,
Planet Waves was released on February 9, 1974. The album was No. 1 on the Billboard album charts for four weeks, and spent 12 weeks total in the Billboard Top 40. it was also the first and only studio album that Dylan and the Band recorded together. The final three shows of the tour at The Forum in Inglewood, California were recorded and assembled into the double album
Before the Flood. After moving to Malibu in 1973, Robertson and the Band had discovered a ranch in Malibu near Zuma Beach called "Shangri-La" and decided to lease the property. The album release of
The Basement Tapes (1975), credited to Bob Dylan and the Band, was the first album production that took place in the new studio at Shangri-La. The album, produced by Robertson, featured a selection of tapes from the original 1967 Basement Tapes sessions with Dylan, as well as demos for tracks eventually recorded for the
Music From Big Pink album. Robertson cleaned up the tracks, and the album was released in July 1975.
1976–1978: The Last Waltz The Band began touring again in June 1976, performing throughout the summer. While on the summer tour, member Richard Manuel severely injured his neck in a boating accident, so ten dates were cancelled. Helm later made the case in his autobiography, ''This Wheel's on Fire'', that Robertson had forced the Band's breakup on the rest of the group. For his part, Robertson later stated that concerns about heroin use by Danko, Helm, and Manuel led him to take control of the Band and led to his departure from the Band. Concert promoter
Bill Graham booked the Band at the
Winterland Ballroom on
American Thanksgiving, November 25, 1976.
The Last Waltz was a gala event, with ticket prices of $25 per person. It included a Thanksgiving dinner served to the audience, and featured the Band performing with various musical guests. Robertson and Scorsese developed a 200-page script for the show. After the concert event was finished, Scorsese had 400 reels of raw footage to work with. The first five sides feature live performances from the concert, and the last side contains studio recordings from the MGM sound stage sessions, including
Out of the Blue, which would be released as a single and which is the third and last Band song on which Robertson sang lead. The album peaked at No. 16 on the Billboard charts, and remained in the Top 40 for 8 weeks. The film fared well with both rock and film critics. Robertson and Scorsese made appearances throughout America and Europe to promote the film. In his mixed review,
Roger Ebert wrote, "In
The Last Waltz, we have musicians who seem to have bad memories. Who are hanging on. Scorsese's direction is mostly limited to closeups and medium shots of performances; he ignores the audience. The movie was made at the end of a difficult period in his own life, and at a particularly hard time (the filming coincided with his work on
New York, New York). This is not a record of serene men, filled with nostalgia, happy to be among friends." Robertson left the band in 1976, but performed with them one final time on March 1, 1978 at the Roxy in Los Angeles.
Copyright controversy Robertson is credited as writer or co-writer of the majority of The Band's songs and, as a result, has received most of the songwriting royalties generated from the music. That developed into a point of contention, especially for Helm. In his 1993 autobiography, ''This Wheel's on Fire: Levon Helm and the Story of The Band'', Helm disputed the validity of the songwriting credits as listed on the albums and explained that The Band's songs were developed in collaboration with all members. Danko concurred with Helm: "I think Levon's book hits the nail on the head about where Robbie and Albert Grossman and some of those people went wrong and when The Band stopped being The Band... I'm truly friends with everybody but, hey—it could happen to Levon, too. When people take themselves too seriously and believe too much in their own bullshit, they usually get in trouble." Robertson denied that Helm had written any of the songs attributed to Robertson. ==Session work and production work==