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Robbie Robertson, the Canadian guitarist who led the roots rock group The Band as it electrified and shaped the American music scene of the 1970s, and frequently collaborated with artists like Bob Dylan and Martin Scorsese, died in Los Angeles on Wednesday. He was 80.
His manager of more than three decades, Jared Levine, confirmed in a statement that Robertson had died “surrounded by his family” after a long unspecified illness. With him had been “his wife, Janet, his ex-wife, Dominique, her partner Nicholas, and his children Alexandra, Sebastian, Delphine, and Delphine’s partner Kenny,” Levine said.
The statement also noted that Robertson had recently finished composing the soundtrack to Scorsese’s forthcoming Western epic Killers of the Flower Moon.