He was a multi-instrumentalist, but also a singer (with a baritone voice, he could also sing in falsetto like Ray Charles) and was born on April 3, '43 (a month after Lucio Dalla & Lucio Battisti, but those are other stories...) in Canada.

At 18, he joined the band where Robbie Robertson was already playing (who was 17 at the time) in "The Hawks," and then became the pianist and occasionally the drummer as well as the singer who accompanied Bob Dylan during his "electric" period with "The Band," of which he was considered the leader.

Long before the band broke up, in the '70s he had serious problems with alcohol abuse; in recent times, he had reached the point of downing 8 bottles of liquor a day, not hesitating to take cocaine and who knows what else... to the extent that his wife filed for divorce, and he attempted suicide a couple of times.

In the '80s, he somehow managed to get sober, but following a severe loss, he fell into deep depression and sank back into the abyss of alcohol and drugs.

Among many collaborations, he also worked with Sir Eric Clapton on the album "No Reason To Cry," even gifting him a song.

But after his last concert, upon returning to the hotel, he downed a bottle of Grand Marnier and ended up hanging himself in his room...

It was March 4, '86 (when talking about the coincidence of dates, Dalla turned 43 that day), and during the autopsy it was found that he had ingested cocaine before dying, a classic case of the wolf losing its fur, and so on.

His name was Richard George Manuel. (r.i.p.)

If I Could Give All My Love -Or- Richard Manuel Is Dead