Nathaniel Rateliff paused backstage before the start of an all-star tribute to the late singer-songwriter Robbie Robertson on Thursday, considering what Robertson’s music, solo and with The Band, has meant to him.
“You know, The Band was kind of a soundtrack to my life,” said Rateliff, describing how his own music was inspired by the gumbo of blues, folk, country and R&B that group cooked up. “As a young adult, I did a really deep dive into the catalog and the Robbie stuff. The Band is a huge influence.”
That sentiment was shared by all of the many musicians who turned out for Life is a Carnival: A Musical Celebration of Robbie Robertson at the Kia Forum in Inglewood on Thursday.
“I feel so honored to be here to carry on this tradition,” said Margo Price, describing how she once sang alongside Robertson at a Nashville event to celebrate “The Last Waltz,” the Martin Scorsese documentary that chronicled The Band’s 1976 farewell show in San Francisco. “Standing between him and Emmylou Harris, singing ‘The Weight,’ it was just one of those ‘pinch-me’ moments.”
The concert on Thursday surely provided similar moments for many more. Some who performed are legends such as Eric Clapton, Van Morrison, and Bobby Weir of the Grateful Dead. Younger generations were represented by Price, Rateliff, Allison Russell, Trey Anastasio of Phish, and Jim James of My Morning Jacket.
The house band was led by Heartbreakers Mike Campbell and Benmont Tench, with others including John Medeski, Ryan Bingham, Jamey Johnson, and Dave Malone of the Radiators on stage for nearly every number.
“We’ve had four days to learn these songs,” Campbell announced early in the show. “And we’re gonna play everyone one them.”
And in a night that sprawled across 35 songs and nearly five hours, they did pretty much that.
After a Native American prayer and song by Native singer Verdell Primeaux opened the show – Robertson had Indigenous roots through his mother – country singer Eric Church opened the show with “Up on Cripple Creek,” the Band’s song that also opened “The Last Waltz,” his twang a good match for The Band’s drummer Levon Helm.
This first of four sets in the show also featured Bingham, who in addition to his country career stars on the TV series “Yellowstone,” singing “Ophelia,” Price doing “Evangeline,” and Allison Russell, a Canadian singer-songwriter like Robertson, singing “Acadian Driftwood.”
Archival clips of Robertson talking about his life and career played at times throughout the night, and this section included one of his best anecdotes, sharing the story of the time Taj Mahal knocked on the door of his Woodstock home, complimented the beautiful teepee in front of the house, told Robertson he needed it, and somehow convinced Robertson to let him have it.
“The guys in The Band asked me what happened to my teepee,” Robertson said in the footage. “I said, ‘I don’t know. Taj Mahal came over and said he wanted my teepee. He was serious; I had to work something out.”
That brought out Taj Mahal for Bo Diddley’s “Who Do You Love?” which like many of the non-Band covers in the show were also featured in “The Last Waltz” concert. Singer-pianist Bruce Hornsby came next, singing a pair of songs including “Go Back to Your Woods,” which he co-wrote with Robertson.
Country singer Jamey Johnson, one of the standout performers of the night, then closed out this segment with a powerful run through “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down.”
The second focused a little more on the R&B side of Robertson’s songwriting, with Nathaniel Rateliff featured on three songs including “Baby Don’t You Do It,” “Across the Great Divide,” and the gentler “Twilight,” a number he said the Robertson family had requested he sing. Jamey Johnson stepped forward again for another great vocal on “Rag Mama Rag” with Hornsby on piano.
Then, in a clip from a 1980 documentary on Scorsese, who around then began a longterm collaboration with Robertson doing music for his films, we see a very tipsy Robertson drop the needle on Van Morrison’s “Tupelo Honey,” which over the years became a shared favorite of the two friends.
Morrison then walked out to sing that song, at 79 his voice still strong and clear. Morrison, a friend of Robertson’s from the late ’60s when both lived in Woodstock, and a performer in “The Last Waltz,” stayed to play “Days Like This,” switching from guitar to saxophone, and then “Wonderful Remark,” which debut in Scorsese’s “The King of Comedy,” for which Robertson chose the music. (Morrison has a pair of shows at the Orpheum Theatre in Los Angeles on Saturday and Sunday, Oct. 19-20.)
During the break that followed, Robertson’s career as a music supervisor and composer, most of that with Scorsese, was chronicled on screens inside the Forum. Scorsese’s “The Color of Money” got the most footage, apparently thanks to Robertson’s collaboration on a song for it with Eric Clapton, who arrived to play the third set of the show.
Clapton, who played the Hollywood Bowl on Saturday, Oct. 12, used his own band for the five songs he played, and their sharpness and volume stood out in comparison to the occasional wobbles of the house band and guest singers, who’d had much less time to prepare. The singer-guitarist, like Morrison, now 79, was terrific, playing four songs by The Band, including “The Shape I’m In” and a powerful take on “Chest Fever.”
Clapton closed with the Bobby “Blue” Bland number “Further On Up the Road,” which he’d played during “The Last Waltz” concert in 1973, and with Robertson in 2003 as Clapton was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a solo artist. “Thank you, Robbie, for leading the way,” Clapton said at the finish.
The show on Thursday was not sold out, and some fans started to slip away after seeing Clapton, the biggest star on the bill, after realizing the show looked likely to run an hour more to midnight. Their loss, because the final set, with the musicians loose and ready to rock, delivered more highlights.
After Jim Jones of My Morning Jacket sang a delicate, lovely version of “It Makes No Difference,” singer-guitarist Warren Haynes returned for a rousing run through “Stage Fright,” and then a drawn-out cover of Van Morrison’s “Caravan” that might have been the performance highlight of the night.
Bobby Weir of the Grateful Dead arrived to sing “When I Paint My Masterpiece,” performing it to his solo guitar accompaniment before Trey Anastasio of Phish showed up to sing and play guitar on “The Unfaithful Servant” and “Look Out Cleveland.”
Almost all of the performers returned for “The Weight,” with Mavis Staples growling her way through the song to the obvious delight of Anastasio, who took over for one of the verses.
Bob Dylan was closely associated with The Band for years, with Robertson, Helm and the others serving as his band in the ’60s and tourmates in the ’70s. He’s on tour in Europe so any question of whether he’d show up was moot.
But his presence was felt a few times during the show, and none more so than the final number, his song “I Shall Be Released,” which capped a night of honor and respect but mostly love for Robbie Robertson and the music he left behind.
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