Levon Helm – Midnight rambler
Woodstock, New York, has been known as a rural artist destination since the early 1900s, with painters, writers and musicians drawn to Byrdcliffe, Maverick, and other art colonies, scenes, and schools. The music world followed Albert Grossman in the early 1960s, especially when the influential folk and rock manager’s most famous client, Bob Dylan, moved to town. Dylan put Woodstock on the rock ‘n’ roll map, but not long after the 1969 festival in Bethel that bore the town’s name, Dylan and his family fled to Greenwich Village. Dylan is ancient history in Woodstock, but the story of The Band, who came to town and made music in a house known as Big Pink, continues to haunt these hills.
The chamber-group like alchemy of The Band is what made them special. I first saw them live at their Fillmore East debut in 1969, and it remains one of my richest concert memories. It’s hard to name a group whose vocal and instrumental interplay was as soulfully textured as that of The Band, which besides Helm consisted of Robertson on guitar, Rick Danko on bass, Richard Manuel on keyboards and drums, and Garth Hudson on a variety of keyboards and horns. Having three distinctive lead singers in Manuel, Helm, and Danko proved the ultimate ace in the hole.
The story of The Band, however, is also enough to make you cry. Helm chose not to talk to No Depression for this story, but after his 1993 autobiography, This Wheel’s On Fire, everybody knows his venomous regard for Robertson (an arguably more balanced telling of The Band’s story can be found in Barney Hoskyns’ Across The Great Divide). Helm’s main beef is that Robertson took sole credit for songs that Helm says were honed by the group during rehearsals and recording sessions.
Disputes over publishing rights are a familiar story, and can kill a band (U2, for one, chooses to share credit equally). Some believe that if a group member contributes significantly to a song’s arrangement, that member deserves part of the writing royalty, and indeed, songwriters sometimes give a share of the publishing to uncredited colleagues. In this case, one could also argue that Robertson’s lyrics borrowed from Helm’s stories of the south.
It’s useful, in any event, to examine the songwriting credits on Music From Big Pink and The Band. The former includes four songs by Robertson, three by Manuel, one Bob Dylan song, and two Dylan co-writes, one with Danko and another with Manuel. On The Band, Robertson has eight solo songs, three collaborations with Manuel, and one with Helm. The extraordinary ensemble work that characterizes these records might rightfully suggest all members deserved a piece of the publishing, but at the same time, Robertson was clearly doing the heavy lifting in terms of songwriting.
Two wrinkles in the story suggest why Robertson became the public and songwriting face of the group that, following its departure from Ronnie Hawkins, was known as Levon & the Hawks. The first was Helm’s decision to leave the Dylan tour toward the end of 1965 because he hated the booing with which folk fans greeted the singer’s more aggressive rock sound. The others soldiered on with a different drummer, and can be heard on Volume 4 of Dylan’s Bootleg series, Live 1966.
Robertson likely studied not just Dylan, a singer-songwriter at the peak of his powers, but also his manager. After Dylan’s motorcycle accident in July 1966, the former Hawks, who were on retainer to Dylan, moved to Woodstock. Robertson rented a house with his girlfriend, and Danko, Manuel, and Hudson moved into a house in nearby West Saugerties that would become known as Big Pink. Helm rejoined his mates in late 1967, after Grossman got the group a deal with Capitol Records.
Meanwhile, Dylan and Robertson would come by Big Pink daily to write and record all manner of covers and originals in a basement Hudson had wired up for recording. (Selections from the much-bootlegged sessions were eventually released as The Basement Tapes.) Part of the plan was for the prolific Dylan to write new tunes that could be covered by other artists. Grossman created a publishing firm for these songs called Dwarf Music; when Dylan later discovered that he’d also helped himself to half the proceeds, it precipitated nearly two decades of litigation between Dylan and his soon to be ex-manager. What does this have to do with The Band? All of the songs on Music From Big Pink, including “The Weight”, are published by Dwarf Music.
Musicians ignore business at their own peril, and from the evidence of Helm’s own book, he and the others were too busy with music, sex, drugs and booze to pay much attention. “The first royalty checks we got almost killed some of us,” said Danko, as quoted in Helm’s book. “‘This Wheel’s On Fire’ was never really a hit, but it had been recorded by a few people, and all of a sudden I got a couple hundred thousand dollars out of left field….Dealing with this wasn’t in the fuckin’ manual, man!”
Life became even more of a carnival when the group began to tour after their self-titled album was released in 1969. The Band was always a great live act — Rock Of Ages, recorded in 1971 with horn arrangements by Allen Toussaint, remains an in-concert classic — but compare the performance clips from 1970’s Festival Express and 1976’s The Last Waltz, and it’s easy to see they were living fast and hard.
Artistically, The Band was never better than on its first two albums, though 1970’s Stage Fright had its moments, and 1975’s Northern LightsSouthern Cross was regarded as a return to form. Robertson was certainly no choirboy, but between strained communication, drunken car accidents, and the sad fact that alcoholism had reduced Manuel to a shadow of his gifted past, it’s little wonder he wanted to call it quits after The Last Waltz.
Helm grumbled that Scorsese’s film was shot as if it were Robertson’s Hollywood screen test, and though Robertson did star in 1980’s Carny, it was Helm who found a second career as a fine character actor in such movies as Coal Miner’s Daughter, The Right Stuff, and the recent Shooter. For Robertson, though, Scorsese was like the new Dylan, a great artist from whom he could learn. The players in The Band got loaded and drove their cars fast. Robertson and Scorsese snorted coke and screened Kurosawa movies. That’s why The Last Waltz really was the last dance.
Woodstock is a small town, and if you listen to the wind in the pines, you can almost hear The Band. I moved here in 1992 and live in a house a couple hundred yards from where Amy Helm was possibly conceived. I dutifully found Big Pink (not easy), and am blessed to play with musicians whose connections to The Band go as far back as 1969. Hell, my cleaning lady used to work for Albert Grossman, who died on a trans-Atlantic flight in 1986, and who was buried behind his Woodstock restaurant, the Bear. Incidentally, there’s a Snickers bar in the casket.