The Band’s Robbie Robertson Dead at 80

Robbie Robertson, songwriter and lead guitarist for legendary rock group The Band, is dead … TMZ has confirmed.

Sources close to Robbie tell us he died Wednesday in Los Angeles after battling prostate cancer for about a year. We’re told he’d been doing ok, recently, but on Tuesday he told his wife he wasn’t feeling well, and she took him to a hospital.

We’re told his wife got a call from the hospital in the early hours of Wednesday informing her Robbie had passed.

Robbie’s group first formed in Canada in the late ’50s as The Hawks — including the late Levon Helm and Rick Danko — but they gained wide notoriety when they backed Bob Dylan on his 1966 tour … and after that launched their own career as The Band.

Robbie wrote some of The Band’s most iconic hits like “The Weight,” and “Up On Cripple Creek.”

He also had a solo career that included the 1987 hit song, “Somewhere Down the Crazy River.”

The Band was the subject of Martin Scorsese‘s classic 1978 film, “The Last Waltz” … documenting their final show. They were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1994.

Robbie was 80.