Eric Clapton and Van Morrison are among the classic-rock heavyweights who will pay tribute to the late Robbie Robertson at an all-star tribute concert set for Oct. 17 at Inglewood’s Kia Forum.
“Life Is a Carnival: A Musical Celebration of Robbie Robertson,” as the show is billed, will also feature Bob Weir, Elvis Costello, Trey Anastasio, Mavis Staples, Eric Church, Noah Kahan, Mike Campbell, Warren Haynes, Bruce Hornsby, Taj Mahal and Margo Price, organizers announced Tuesday. Lucinda Williams, Ryan Bingham, Jim James, Jamey Johnson, Daniel Lanois, Robert Randolph, Nathaniel Rateliff, Allison Russell, Benmont Tench and Don Was will also appear.
A hugely influential singer, guitarist, songwriter and composer — and a founding member of the Band — Robertson died last August at 80, shortly after completing his final work: the Oscar-nominated score for Martin Scorsese’s “Killers of the Flower Moon,” for which he drew on his heritage as the son of a mother raised on the Six Nations Reserve near Toronto. Scorsese, who famously documented the Band’s farewell concert in 1978’s “The Last Waltz,” hosted a private tribute to Robertson in November at the Village Studios in West Los Angeles and is credited as an executive producer of October’s event.
Produced by Blackbird Presents, which also put on Willie Nelson’s two-night 90th-birthday concert last year at the Hollywood Bowl, the Forum show will come 50 years after the Band wrapped its storied tour with Bob Dylan at the Inglewood arena in 1974.
Tickets will go on sale Friday, with a portion of proceeds earmarked for Canada’s Woodland Cultural Center, which “serves to preserve, promote and strengthen Indigenous language, culture, art and history,” according to the organization.