What do the lyrics in Broken Arrow mean? And who was Robbie Robertson, then, so we can know?
Hey, I don’t know what the first question was, but Broken Arrow was NOT written by Robbie Robertson, it was written by Neil Young, and first recorded by the Buffalo Springfield. As far as the meaning….Even Neil probably couldn’t explain that satisfactorily. It’s partly about fame, partly about the problems of being in a group (Buffalo Springfield had a lot of in-fighting, and didn’t last long), and partly about Native Americans (which Neil wrote about in many songs like Pocahontas, Powderfinger, Cortez the Killer, etc.) As far as Robbie Robertson, he was part of The Band (originally known as Levon & the Hawks), and apparently a huge egomaniac. According to Levon Helm’s (the drummer) autobiography, he basically stole full songwriting credit for most of The Bands music.
