Robbie Robertson

News this morning that Robbie Robertson has died. One of the great guitarists and songwriters of his era, he backed Bob Dylan, who described him as “the only mathematical guitar genius I’ve ever run into who doesn’t offend my intestinal nervousness with his rearguard sound”. I am not quite sure what that means.

But for some time I have been meaning to say a word about Robbie Robertson. I looked up “The night they drove old Dixie down” on the internet, since there were a couple of words I couldn’t quite make out. To my surprise, I learned that we are not supposed to sing and play this song, since it glorifies the Confederacy, who were pro-slavery.

I think that only someone who had never heard the song could say that. It is about defeat, not glory. It is told in the persona of a working class boy from Tennessee who follows his brother into the Confederacy; he sees his brother killed by the Yankees and his people hungry and defeated. His attitude is stoic resignation: “Take what you need and leave the rest”.

What do these people make of “The Rumor”?

Perhaps the other reason the song offends is the cultural appropriation. If you write from the point of view of someone not entirely like you, expect trouble. Here is a young white male Canadian writing in the persona of a young white male Tennesseean. Oh dear.