Robbie Robertson on why The Band bid the road goodbye

UPDATE:Robbie Robertson died on Aug. 9, 2023. You can read his obituary here.

It was a natural question to askRobbie Robertson: Why end something that had worked so well?

The Band had seen so much success playing together for many years. So why, as they say, break up the band or in this case, the touring life of The Band?

They had their reasons.

"We kind of grew up on the roadyou know, it's16 years on the road that we had spent together," said Robertson, as he started off his answer, when speaking on CBC's90 Minutes Live in 1978.

"Itbecame so it wasn't progressive for us any longer," he added.

Getting 'ahead of the game'

In particular, Robertsonsaid he and his bandmates also saw the dangers of continuing to live this kind of life indefinitely.

• WATCH a longer version of this 1978CBCinterview with Robbie Robertson

"I'm talking about what this way of life does to you and what it's done to a whole lot of people," he said. "We were fortunate enough to find out, or sense this, before it was too late. We thought we were ahead of the game."

Plus, to keep on doing it forthe money might not be worth it.

"The only reason that we would really have to do it, more and more, would be for financial reasons and The Band has never operated very well in that area. We were never able to do things for that reason," said Robertson, who was born in Toronto and whose mother was raised onthe Six Nations reserve.

'We didn't want it to be a down thing'

But The Band didn't want to leave the stage without a proper goodbye. Hence the plan to put on a special farewell concert, which took place in San Francisco on American Thanksgiving in 1976.

"Just to play our last concert wasn't enough. We wanted to do something. We didn't want it to be a down thing, a funeral," said Robertson. "We wanted it to be a celebration."

That show would feature not only The Band, but guest performances from many other top musicians, including Canadians Joni Mitchell and Neil Young. Bob Dylan, Muddy Waters and Neil Diamond were some of the others to take the stage that night.

Martin Scorsese was there, of course, to direct the film captured that nightthat became The Last Waltz.

Robertson would go on to have a successful career as a solo artist. He also worked on film projects on a few occasions as an actor, but much more frequentlyon the music side of things as a composer and producer.

The Band was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1994.