Late Rock Legend Earns Oscar Nomination After His Death

Robbie Roberts, the late guitarist for The Band, was nominated for Best Score at the 2024 Oscars.

By Stephen Andrew

Late rock legend Robbie Robertson has earned an Oscar nomination, several months after his death. When the 2024 Academy Awards nominees were announced on Tuesday morning, Robertson picked up a posthumous Best Score nomination for his work on Killers of the Flower Moon. The other nominees are Laura Karpman for American Fiction, John Williams for Indiana Jones And The Dial Of Destiny, Ludwig Göransson for Oppenheimer, and Jerskin Fendrix for Poor Things.

Robertson was well-known as the iconic rock guitarist and primary songwriter for classic rockers The Band. He penned classics such as "The Weight," "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down," "Up On Cripple Creek" and many more of the group's hit songs. Sadly, he died in August 2023, at the age of 80, after a year-long battle with prostate cancer. In a statement published by Rolling Stone, Robertson's management company said, "Robbie was surrounded by his family at the time of his death, including his wife, Janet, his ex-wife, Dominique, her partner Nicholas, and his children Alexandra, Sebastian, Delphine, and Delphine's partner Kenny." The statement went on to say, "In lieu of flowers, the family has asked that donations be made to the Six Nations of the Grand River to support the building of their new cultural center."

Born in Toronto, Ontario, Canada in 1943, Robertson lived a fascinating life. In his younger years, he traveled with a carnival and later worked a freak show. He would later turn the experiences into inspiration for his song "Life is a Carnival" — with the Band — as well as the 1980 movie Carny, which he also starred in and produced.

Robertson began playing music in his teen years, eventually landing a gig playing in The Hawks, with the late Ronnie Hawkins. Notably, the Hawks band would come to consist of Robertson, Levon Helm, Rick Danko, Richard Manuel, and Garth Hudson. They would later come to adopt the name The Band, after also playing for a couple of years with Bob Dylan, whom they would later reteam with, in the mid-70s.

Later in life, Robertson went on to work in music production for film and TV, often working with Martin Scorsese. The pair collaborated on films such as Raging Bull (1980), The King of Comedy (1983), Casino (1995), The Departed (2006), The Wolf of Wall Street (2013), and The Irishman (2019). His work on Scorsese's Killers of the Flower Moon appears to be Robertson's only posthumous film project.

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