The Band (Part 3) – The Woodstock Years

Written by Jim S.

L-r (Levon Helm, Garth Hudson, Robbie Robertson, Rick Danko, Richard Manuel)

Robbie Robertson: “I had, with Ronnie Hawkins and Bob Dylan, played guitar through your brain. I had played raging, screaming solos. When I started playing guitar it was with a vengeance. It was with such anger. It was with such ambition. I was in my early twenties with Bob Dylan. Same thing, a hundred guitar solos a night. I’d done this to my death.

[With the Band] the song is becoming the thing, the mood is becoming the thing. … But there’s a vibe to certain records, a quality, whether it’s a Motown thing or a Sun Records thing or a Phil Spector thing. I wanted to discover the sound of the Band. So I thought, I’m gonna do this record and I’m not gonna play a guitar solo on the whole record. I’m only going to play riffs, Curtis Mayfield kind of riffs. I wanted the drums to have their own character, I wanted the piano not to sound like a big Yamaha grand. I wanted it to sound like an upright piano. I wanted these pictures in your mind, I wanted this flavor.”

In 1966, Dylan had moved to Woodstock, NY, which since the early twentieth century has been a well-known artists’ colony. Members of the Hawks had been visiting the area and all eventually wound up moving there. The guys rented a house in West Saugerties, NY which they christened Big Pink. (Robbie lived nearby with his future wife.)

They set up the basement of the house as a recording studio (two-track reel-to-reel tape recorder) and started writing and recording songs. Dylan, now married with a couple of kids, joined them on a regular basis. As a matter of fact, all the guys in the band were on a modest retainer paid by Dylan’s manager, Albert Grossman.

By all accounts, 1967 was a great period of creativity for all concerned. The guys felt that after so many years on the road playing in shitty clubs it helped to have a nice homey environment rather than a cold recording studio. They could walk out the door and there were woods and a dog and you know, the whole country thing. I think that that to a large measure explains the debut album’s feel.

The officially unreleased recordings of Dylan and the (still unnamed) band became known informally as The Basement Tapes. A couple of songs on the album (“Tears of Rage,” “This Wheel’s on Fire,”) eventually wound up on Music From Big Pink.

“I didn’t know how to record the way other people were recording, and I didn’t want to,” said Dylan. “The Beatles had just released Sgt. Pepper which I didn’t like at all,” he continued. “I thought that was a very indulgent album, though the songs on it were real good. I didn’t think all that production was necessary.”

Robbie: “One of the things is that if you played loud in the basement, it was really annoying because it was a walled room. So we played in a little huddle: if you couldn’t hear the singing, you were playing too loud.”

(Couldn’t find this on YouTube.)

The guys were having such a great time playing that they were pretty sure Levon would want to come back. (Plus they now had a record deal.) He had given them his father’s number so they could always find him. Helm, during his time away, hadn’t been tremendously engaged. He hung around New Orleans with a buddy, worked on oil rigs when he needed money and then, by his own admission, sat around watching TV and “waiting.”

Within the small, clubby community of Woodstock, people would see the guys from the Hawks getting around town. Sometimes they’d stop in a store to buy something and someone else would say, “Oh, he’s with the band,” meaning Dylan’s band.

But now it was time to do their own thing and so, after kicking around some other names (“The Honkies,” “The Crackers,”), The Band they became. (Actually they signed a contract as The Crackers but the record company called them The Band.) Around the time Levon returned, the guys hooked up with producer John Simon whom they found to be very sympactico to their sound.

As I recount in my Music From Big Pink post, the band recorded the album in LA and NYC.  Clearly, some of Dylan had rubbed off on them in that there was very little R&B on the album and it leaned much more heavily to his introspective style. (Robbie felt, however, that Dylan was a little too “wordy.”) I’ve already written in that post about the album’s impact so I won’t belabor it here.

I will say in retrospect they could perhaps have kicked the energy level up a little bit more, which they were fully capable of doing. Their sometime bandmate Al Kooper wrote a glowing review for Rolling Stone. 

The Band were now free and clear of the shadow of anyone – Ronnie Hawkins, Bob Dylan, etc. Not only were they a great ensemble but they had carved out something unique. They simplified music at a time when it was going exactly the other way. In a sense, they were the original “back-to-the-country” guys.

In his induction of The Band into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Eric Clapton reveals that he (seriously) wanted to be a member but didn’t have the balls to ask. I watched this video and it’s weird but he bemoans the fact that he was a working musician and there was a band he desperately wanted to be part of but couldn’t, like an exclusive club that would not let him in. And yet half the world would want to be in his bands. The grass is always greener somewhere else in Eric’s world.

But you have to put yourself back in the times to get the full flavor of this era. Dylan had a mystique and that aura carried over to everyone who played with him. So I think The Band got the benefit of that, whether they wanted it or not. That said, they were also a group that could play pretty much any style of music and, among them, could “command seventeen different instruments.”

Shortly after the release of Big Pink, Rick Danko crashed his car, preventing the band from touring behind the album. This only unintentionally served to enhance the mystique around this band that no one really knew.

Once Danko had recuperated, they played their first gig as The Band at Bill Graham’s Winterland in April 1969. (“First time in four years we didn’t get booed,” says Levon.) In August of that year, they played Woodstock and made the cover of Rolling Stone. And in September they released their terrific second album, The Band. (AKA The Brown Album.)

By now, Rolling Stone had decided that they were the Second Coming and treated them thusly. (Jann Wanner worshiped Dylan so much it’s a wonder he didn’t ask him to marry him.) People started treating them differently, never good for a working band such as The Band.

Here’s a rockin’ little number from The Band I’ve always loved, “Rag Mama Rag.” Robertson gets writer credit but Levon says this was a group improvisation:

Another great song is “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down.” Sung again by Levon, I always found it odd that a Canadian guy wrote a song about the loss of the American Civil War. But I’ve come to understand it was Robbie’s visits to the South that prompted this. Supposedly Levon’s father Diamond said, “Don’t worry – the South is going to rise again:”

By now, the guys had been on the road in one fashion or another for the better part of 10 -12 years. Now that they were on top of the world the only questions were – how long could they stay there? And how much gas was left in the tank?

Next (and final) post – Last Tango at Winterland

Sources: Wikipedia; Ronnie Hawkins’ online bio; Testimony, Robbie Robertson; This Wheel’s On Fire, Levon Helm; The Last Waltz, Martin Scorsese: Ain’t in it For My Health, Levon Helm movie bio.

28 thoughts on “The Band (Part 3) – The Woodstock Years”

  1. Love that Picture. Look at all that rock n roll glamour. They weren’t making it on any of my sisters fan mags. ‘Basement Tapes’ never gets old. Lyrics from ‘Rag’ pop into the old head periodically. (Did you ever get the other Canadian guy writing a Civil War song ‘Powder Finger’, What’s with that?) So much good stuff there Jim. New stuff, things I’ve forgot. These guys had a lot of miles on them by this time. Probably inevitable that it was going to end. (Those articles like the RS one are too much for CB). One thing. ‘Chest Fever’, where the hell did that come from? I remember hearing it and really liking it but having no idea who it was.

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  2. And just a few years before that they were in suits like they all worked at a bank. (BB King used to tell his band to dress like they were going to the bank for a loan.) Powderfinger. Yeah, hadn’t thought about that. One of Neil’s best.

    You got me wondering on ‘Chest Fever.’ When you first hear it, the thing is like what, church? So I looked up what Robbie said in his book. One thing he wanted was to have a song to show off Garth’s skills.Here’s Robbie:

    “This song was right out of the basement tapes program, surreal words and monkeyshine music. (That’s what they should have called the album – me.) Garth kicked it off with that hint of JS. Bah on a gravel back road. ..When we came back in, Garth played an organ solo unlike anybody else on the planet, floating and soaring into space with a combination of musicalities that you would rarely, if ever, hear steamed together.”

    He admits that the words are surreal and nobody’s really sure what it’s about. Robbie was influenced by foreign films that had surreal dream-like images. And no doubt by Dylan who probably said, “Fuck it, just go with it,”

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  3. It’s definitely Garth’s thing. Made me think of ELP/Deep Purple at the start. I absolutely love ‘Chest Fever’. Garth was so much of their sound. If I’m ever at the bar playing rock trivia I’m going to use you as a life line. I could hear Bob saying that. Probably they said that to Robbie quite a bit.

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  4. My buddy Steve and I played rock trivia on a cruise. The better halves decided to stroll around while we were flexing our rock muscles We actually tied with another table. They had eight people. we had two. Did we win? I guess not. There was no face-off at the end so I think we all got free Mai Tais served to us by the cute waitress.

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  5. (Those cruise trivia contests are hilarious). Nice review of a great band, Jim. What I love about the Band is their musical humility, and the fact that you can’t easily categorize the songs. So many of them sound like 19th-century American “public domain” ballads. Hard to believe a bunch of 20-something Canadians (Levon excepted) were writing them. Like the English, the Canadians had to remind us Americans of where our roots lie!

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    1. I grew up in a border town. My grandmother was from N Dakota so maybe those roots played a big part on my being. I have never felt a big difference (especially in the music). This music kinda plays that out. ‘Acadian Driftwood’ would be a good tune to your point Pete about “public domain”. Man do I love that song. Levon, Richard and Rick sing that one beautifully. Garth’s accordion, fiddles … goose bumps. You guys are putting tears in my eyes. Then Rick burst into his Quebecois thing at the end. Beautiful. Great input Pete and a terrific job Jim. Take a bow!

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        4. Yes, he was considered the lead singer in the group even though most of them sang.

          BTW, speaking of snow, we are hunkered down here in New England waiting for the mother of all blizzards.

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  6. My buddy Steve got all worked up about us having won or at least, tieing them. Wanted us to get up and take a bow or something. I had to remind him it was a stupid rock trivia contest, not the Nobel peace prize. :- D

    Boy, you hit the nail on the head with the public domain thing. It’s like those songs have always been there, like we grew up with them. Had he lived a little longer, it’s not hard to conceive of Stephen Foster as having written “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down.”

    BTW, when I do a series, I usually strive to keep it within 3 posts. But between the Band’s career, Dylan, and the Hawks, there was just no way to accomplish that and do the story justice. So, thanks for hanging in there. One more to come, probably tomorrow. Something to read for those of us in the East who will be blizzared-out.

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  7. Just over 300 pages into ‘Testimony’. wasn’t surprising they moved on from the Hawk. Liked how the rest of the group assembled. knew most of that. The whole Dylan thing was interesting. RR went into more detail about the music which i dug and what i picked up was the mutual respect. It wasn’t a one way street. Dylan knew these guys were special. I got bored with the Dylan tour stuff. Too much name dropping etc. Could have shortened that up big time. “Bob was on a mission and didn’t back down even under all the pressure. “Hey I’m making music with guys I like. Here it is”. The boys and Bob fed off each other. The best part of that was when Dylan brought out the ventriloquist dummy for press conferences. I liked that a lot.
    Back on track for me when they get to Big Pink’ back to that great music that was coming out of them and where it was coming from. Just how different it was. Fascinating how they found their groove. All 5 of them. Robertson says that. “Equal playing field” he called it. Yup.
    Lots of good stuff so far. I really like how they were isolated from a lot of the trends and were their own guys. Robertson was by far the member who was drawn more to the times than the other guys. I liked their style. It comes out loud and clear that he loved his Band members and is feeling some kind of nostalgia and how special Rick, Garth, Levon and Richard were to him.

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    1. Yeah it’s a good read. It’s interesting how influential The Band were with Big Pink and then Dylan with John Wesley Harding. Everybody said, well, I guess the psychedlic era is over. That didn’t last long either because Zap and Sabbath were just around the corner.

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      1. I’m really feeling for Robertson for the first time. Dealing with 3 of his band-mates who are getting into heroin. Not chipping but using. What a horror show. I legitimately felt bad for him. trying to hold things together in that atmosphere.

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        1. Springsteen tells the story of how he came to be a “benevolent dictator” in E Street Band. He says that these are guys in their twenties, many of them attracted to this lifestyle because they’re misfits in the first place. (My guess is CB may know something about the artistic lifestyle.)

          He says he spent every day for years bailing guys out jail, guys who left pot on their front seat, publicly drunk, whatever. (Not necessarily E Street Band but recall he was in and out of bands for years before that.) So he figured, fuck it, if he was gonna make it out of Asbury Park it had to be his music, he had to lay down the law, and he became “The Boss.” And while he eventually developed a fondness for alcohol, he has never (or rarely) touched a non-prescription drug.

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        2. I knew Bruce ran a tight ship. When drug use and alcohol get in the way of doing the job and it effects others around you then it needs to be dealt with. Even between Rick, Richard and Levon they were pissed off at each other for fucking things up. Shit show city.
          Nothing worse than having to deal with that mess. Forget about your responsibilities to your work but how about the personal toil that people have to witness. A subject that gets CB going. When I see the ravages that addictions do to folks it hits some kind of nerve. It takes guts and love to confront that nasty problem. It only has one ending and it’s not pretty.
          I betcha Bruce would have some funny stories around that subject but it gets old real fast.

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        5. This may amuse and/or surprise you but I don’t know Gonsalves. I had to look him up. I appreciate Ellington’s band but I’ve never been a big band jazz fan. Small quintet like Miles Davis’ – yeah. Anyway, i didn’t know what to look for in the video and I don’t even know what Gonsalves looks like.

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        8. All that shit is sad. There’s a clip years later where Duke is lecturing at some university and he gets Paul to come out and accompany him, just sax and piano. You can hear Duke say before he brings him out “Stinky are you juiced again?”. It really is a beautiful moment. Sad .It shows how much Ellington loved the guy despite all the shit he put up with.
          Doc weren’t The Who going to kick Moon out of the band near the end. I know that he really stretched their patience.

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        9. Yeah, they threatened to kick him out but it was too little, too late. He was a guy whose life wax exemplified by total excess and well, it just consumed him.

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