Fans of The Band celebrated the 50th anniversary of the band’s 1970 Stage Fright studio album in 2020, and to mark the ongoing celebration, Universal Music Enterprises has shared a previously-unreleased live version of the band performing their most well-known hit, “The Weight”.
This live take on the celebrated Music From Big Pink track was recorded during The Band’s June 3rd, 1971 show at London’s famed Royal Albert Hall. The previously-unreleased concert is set to be included in full on The Band’s upcoming Stage Fright 50th Anniversary Edition box set, due out on February 12th.
The song that perfectly encapsulates The Band’s deep arsenal of talented singers in Levon Helm, Rick Danko, and Richard Manuel came in at the three slot of the show as the group explodes out of the starting gate. Coming into London hot on the tail end of a 1971 European tour, this two-night run at the Royal Albert Hall was The Band’s first time back at the famous venue since backing Bob Dylan in 1966. Given the crowd’s vitriolic reaction to the newly-electrified demeanor of the iconic singer-songwriter five years prior, the group’s 1971 return was justifiably much more rewarding.
“Everybody was on their game. And it was such a great relief to come back to Albert Hall from the last experience of playing with Bob there, [Laughs]” Robertson said “When we played with Bob, we were on a ridiculous schedule on tour. I’m amazed that Bob, you know, could even pull it off physically. This time, the crowd was just over the top on enthusiasm and we were trying to give it back to them.”
Just when you think “The Weight” has reached peak exposure in the culture, Robbie Robertson’s 1968 song and its original recording by the Band — always manages to stage a comeback. During the past five decades, it’s repeatedly popped up in soundtracks, from Easy Rider to The Big Chill to the recent Dawn of the Planet of the Apes. In 2019, an all-star remake featuring Robertson, Ringo Starr and musicians from around the world generated millions of views. And next week, a new Band box set will revive “The Weight” again, this time by way of an excavated live version.
Starting with Music From Big Pink, Robertson has started the process of digging through master tapes and archives of each of the Band’s albums in time for their five-decade anniversaries. This year, the time has come for an upgrade of their third LP, Stage Fright. A 50th-anniversary edition of the album, out February 12th, will include a new stereo mix of the album, a few alternate takes, and a collection of hotel-room jams featuring Robertson, bassist Rick Danko, and pianist-drummer Richard Manuel.
Also included is the never-before-released Live at Royal Albert Hall, June 1971, which carries additional significance. The previous time the Band had played at that austere venue, in 1966, they were known as the Hawks and were backing Bob Dylan on his controversial European tour. The last two shows of the tour took place at the hall, where, as at other shows, some in the audience were less than thrilled by the sound of Dylan backed by a plugged-in band — and let their frustrations be known by way of booing and yelling.
By 1971, though, things had changed: “The Hawks had been booed there last time out,” wrote Levon Helm in his memoir This Wheel’s on Fire. “Not this time. Take my word for it — pandemonium. They were on their feet and dancing from the first notes.”
Naturally, Live at Royal Albert Hall, June 1971, includes a version of “The Weight.” The song was also in the news last December when Dylan sold his song catalogue to UniversalMusic Publishing for a reported $400 million — a deal that, to the bafflement of some, included all the original Band songs from Music From Big Pink. (The Band had signed with Dylan’s publishing company, Dwarf Music, back in 1968.)
To call an album a group’s third best would usually be faint praise, but not where The Band is concerned: 1970’s “Stage Fright” arguably ranks slightly behind its two predecessors in their catalogue, but that’s only because those earlier records are their classic Music from Big Pink debut and their even better eponymous sophomore LP. In this group’s discography, third best is still good enough to put an album on a par with the finest releases of its era. It’s worth noting, moreover, that “Stage Fright” actually did better on the charts than either of the two earlier records.
Like those previous LPs, the self-produced Stage Fright sounds rooted in a mythic version of rural southern America (though all but one of the Band’s members were Canadian): if they’d had rock music in the South in the 1800s, it might have sounded a lot like this.
By the time The Band came to record their third album, in May 1970, expectations were high. They had already been Bob Dylan’s backing group and then broken out on their own to play an integral role in changing the direction of American music with their 1968 masterpiece, “Music From Big Pink”, and its self-titled follow-up. Judging by its title, Stage Fright suggested the group knew they’d have even more to prove. On February 12th, 2021, Capitol/UMe Records will celebrate the 50th anniversary of The Band’s classic third album, Stage Fright, with a suite of newly remixed, remastered and expanded 50th Anniversary Edition packages, including a multi-format Super Deluxe 2CD/Blu-ray/1LP/7-inch vinyl box set photo booklet; digital, 2CD, 180-gram black vinyl, and limited edition 180-gram color vinyl packages. All the Anniversary Edition releases were overseen by principal songwriter Robbie Robertson and boast a new stereo mix by Bob Clearmountain from the original multi-track masters.
Released on August 17th, 1970, “Stage Fright” features two of The Band’s best-known songs, “The Shape I’m In” and the title track, both of which showcased inspired lead vocal performances by Manuel and Danko, respectively, and became staples in the group’s live shows. Recorded over 12 days on the stage of the Woodstock Playhouse, the album was self-produced by The Band for the first time and engineered and mixed by Todd Rundgren with additional mixing by Glyn Johns.
For the first time, the album is being presented in the originally planned song order. The boxed set, CD and digital configurations feature a bevy of unreleased recordings, including “Live at the Royal Albert Hall, June 1971″, a thrilling full concert captured in the midst of their European tour.
The new set also includes alternate versions of “Strawberry Wine” and “Sleeping”; and seven unearthed field recordings, Calgary Hotel Recordings, 1970, an impromptu late-night hotel jam session between Robbie Robertson, Rick Danko and Richard Manuel of several “Stage Fright” songs recorded while the album was in the mixing stage.
As a gesture to the residents of Woodstock – who had endured some of the problems of living in a town that played home to famous musicians – The Band offered to record “Stage Fright” in a private town concert. The proposal was rejected by the local council and so the group recorded the album at the Woodstock Playhouse, without an audience. Young engineer Todd Rundgren was in charge of the acoustics, and guitarist/vocalist Robbie Robertson said, “It turned out to be an interesting acoustical thing because you could perform with the curtain closed and it would give you this dry sound and if you opened the curtain you got the sound of the house in there.”
Though The Band had privacy to be creative, the anxieties of fame and celebrity are evident in the themes of fear and alienation that permeate Stage Fright, which was released on 17th August 1970.
The songs are more personal than those of their first two albums, and an undoubted highlight is the title track, a candid song about Robertson’s struggle with stage fright. He turns his fears about performing for an audience into a universal lament. Robertson said, “In ‘Stage Fright’ a lot of stuff I was trying to hold in was starting to creep out.” Bassist and fiddle player Rick Danko takes lead vocals on the song and delivers a powerful performance, ably supported by Garth Hudson’s fluent organ playing.
Stage Fright continued to highlight The Band’s virtuosity. Hudson also played electric piano, accordion, and tenor and baritone saxophones on the record, while Levon Helm played drums, guitar and percussion (and sang lead vocals on four songs), and Richard Manuel played piano, organ, drums and clavinet.
All that instrumental talent, together with Manuel’s skill as a singer, came together on ‘Sleeping’, a Robertson-Manuel composition that blends rock and jazz inflections into a ruminative gem.
That pairing also co-wrote ‘Just Another Whistle Stop’, which races along in zestful Band style, while the mood darkens again on ‘The Shape I’m In’ and the catchy ‘The WS Walcott Medicine Show’. The bleak ‘Daniel And The Sacred Harp’ is a parable about a musician selling his soul: “The moment of truth is right at hand/Just one more nightmare you can stand.” Robertson, who wrote the song, said he was trying to convey how helpless and vulnerable things seemed for the musicians at the time.
Helm sings tenderly on Robertson’s poignant lullaby of ‘All La Glory’, which he wrote for his child. Hudson’s graceful accordion playing brings out the best from moving lyrics, while ‘The Rumour’, one of seven songs Robertson is credited with writing solo, is another strong offering.
In their 1970 review, Rolling Stone magazine called the album “elusive”. Indeed, “Stage Fright” has the uncertainty of a record made at a time when the bonds between the band members were being tested by personal and professional frictions. However, as a piece of music it stands the test of time.
“It was a dark album,” Helm admitted later. “And an accurate reflection of our group’s collective psychic weather. We all realised something was wrong, that things were beginning to slide.”
The public loved it, however. Stage Fright reached a career-best position of No.5 in the album charts and went gold after selling more than half a million copies.
Exclusively for the boxed set, Clearmountain has also created a new 5.1 surround mix and a hi-res stereo mix of the album, bonus tracks and the live show, presented on Blu-ray. All the new audio mixes have been mastered by Bob Ludwig at Gateway Mastering. The set also includes an exclusive reproduction of the Spanish pressing of The Band’s 1971 7-inch vinyl single for “Time To Kill” b/w “The Shape I’m In” in their new stereo mixes and a photo booklet with new notes by Robbie Robertson and touring photographer John Scheele, who recorded the Calgary HotelRecordings; plus a reprinting of the original Los Angeles Times album review by critic Robert Hilburn; three classic photo lithographs; and photographs from Scheele and several other photographers.
The new collection includes many previously unreleased live recordings.
The Band’s classic 1970 album is often considered slightly inferior to its two stone-cold-classic predecessors, the group’s debut “Music From Big Pink” and the self-titled follow-up — but what’s not often stated is that “slightly inferior” to those albums still makes it one of the best albums of the year if not the era.
While the group had started to fragment a bit at the time of its recording — largely due to substance abuse — it still contains several of their all-time best songs, like the title track, “The Shape I’m In,” “Strawberry Wine” and others. On February 12th, 2021, Capitol/UMe will celebrate the 50th anniversary of The Band’s classic third album, “Stage Fright”, with a suite of newly remixed, remastered and expanded 50th Anniversary Edition packages, including a multi-format Super Deluxe 2CD/Blu-ray/1LP/7-inch vinyl box set photo booklet; digital, 2CD, 180-gram black vinyl, and limited edition 180-gram colour vinyl packages. All the Anniversary Edition releases were overseen by principal songwriter Robbie Robertson and boast a new stereo mix by Bob Clearmountain from the original multi-track masters. For the first time, the album is being presented in the originally planned song order. The boxed set, CD and digital configurations feature a bevy of unreleased recordings, including Live at the Royal Albert Hall, June 1971, In the set’s liner notes, Robertson calls the show at London’s Royal Albert Hall “One of the greatest live concerts The Band ever played. ”It was a thrilling full concert captured in the midst of their European tour; alternate versions of “Strawberry Wine” and “Sleeping”; and seven unearthed field recordings, Calgary Hotel Recordings, 1970, an impromptu late-night hotel jam session between Robbie Robertson, Rick Danko and Richard Manuel of several Stage Fright songs recorded while the album was in the mixing stage.
Exclusively for the boxed set, Clearmountain has also created a new 5.1 surround mix and a hi-res stereo mix of the album, bonus tracks and the live show, presented on Blu-ray. All the new audio mixes have been mastered by Bob Ludwig at Gateway Mastering. The set also includes an exclusive reproduction of the Spanish pressing of The Band’s 1971 7-inch vinyl single for “Time To Kill” b/w “The Shape I’m In” in their new stereo mixes and a photo booklet with new notes by Robbie Robertson and touring photographer John Scheele, who recorded the Calgary HotelRecordings; 1970,” a fun and loose, impromptu late night hotel jam session between Band members Robertson, Rick Danko and Richard Manuel of several “Stage Fright” songs, recorded during the group’s legendary “Festival Express” Canadian tour with Janis Joplin, the Grateful Dead, Buddy Guy and others. plus a reprinting of the original Los Angeles Times album review by critic Robert Hilburn; three classic photo lithographs; and photographs from Scheele and several other photographers.
Originally Released on August 17th, 1970, Stage Fright features two of The Band’s best-known songs, “The Shape I’m In” and the title track, both of which showcased inspired lead vocal performances by Manuel and Danko, respectively, and became staples in the group’s live shows. Recorded over 12 days on the stage of the Woodstock Playhouse, the album was self-produced by The Band for the first time and engineered and mixed by Todd Rundgren with additional mixing by Glyn Johns.
For the 50th Anniversary collection, the sequence has been changed to present Stage Fright with the originally planned song order.
The release follows last year’s stellar reissue of “The Band,” which included the group’s previously unreleased set from the Woodstock festival. All the Anniversary Edition releases were overseen by principal songwriter Robbie Robertson and boast a new stereo mix by Bob Clearmountain from the original multi-track masters (which resolves the conundrum caused by some of the album’s earlier re-releases, which included incorrect mixes of several songs). While the release notes that “For the first time, the album is being presented in the originally planned song order,” what will really interest fans is the previously unreleased material.
On January 3rd, 1974 Bob Dylan embarked on a 30-date tour with The Band. “Tour ’74” marked the reunion of Dylan with the group that backed him in 1966 as “The Hawks.” A stellar audience recording of The Band’s portion of the show from a January 25th, 1974 concert at Tarrant County Convention Center in Fort Worth, Texas recently surfaced on YouTube.
The Band not only backed Dylan for most of the night, but the quintet played their own material without Bob at portions of each show. In the embed below fans can hear 10 of The Band’s most beloved songs played live . Guitarist Robbie Robertson, multi-instrumentalists Levon Helm and Richard Manuel, keyboardist Garth Hudson and bassist Rick Danko work through such numbers of “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down,” “King Harvest (Has Surely Come),” “Up On Cripple Creek,” “The Shape I’m In” and “The Weight.”
Tarrent Counry Convention Center, Fort Worth, TX, 1-25-1974
Setlist: 1. Stage Fright (0:16) 2. The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down (4:49) 3. King Harvest (Has Surely Come) (9:26) 4. When You Awake (13:09) 5. I Shall Be Released (16:19) 6. Up On Cripple Creek (19:41) 7. Rag Mama Rag (24:43) 8. This Wheel’s On Fire (28:41) 9. The Shape I’m In (33:21) 10. The Weight (36:10)
The Band emerged in the late sixties as part of the roots movement that would come to counter the psychedelic influence that had taken a grip on popular music. This group of four Canadians and one Arkansas musician, who once backed Ronnie Hawkins and Bob Dylan, exploded onto the scene with arguably two of the greatest albums of all time – Music From Big Pink and the self-titled second album The Band. Rustic and encompassing various genres, performed with musicianship of the highest order and with a great trio of vocalists in Levon Helm, RickDanko and Richard Manuel, the albums are like timeless storybooks, documenting a long-gone era with nostalgia, bitterness and regret.
Flanked by a guitarist of the highest order in Robbie Robertson and the almost mythical layer-adding GarthHudson, these are soundscapes like no other. Songs like The Weight, Whispering Pines, Lonesome Suzie, The Night they Drove Old Dixie Down and King Harvest represent a group in full mastery of their abilities and are rightly regarded as classics.
The problem with The Band is that they peaked too early. The dirty habits of the rock and roll life style set in, drugs and alcohol the corrupting influences that saw the group decline after the third album Stage Fright. In addition to this, Robertson has also alluded to the pressures of being on the road that only served to exasperate the issues facing these talented musicians. By the early seventies, Manuel, once the main songwriter for the group, could no longer pen material. His voice remained entrancing but onstage he could barely perform beyond a few numbers. The Band would continue to show sparks of their former selves throughout the remaining seven years they spent together. Moondog Matinee, a covers album, is pretty fine and there are a few nuggets to be found on Northern Lights-Southern Cross, one of the original setup’s final albums. By the time they called it quits following the LastWaltz they were burned out. Robertson could no longer tour and Manuel would tragically take his own life in 1986. A reunited Band in the nineties (minus Robertson) was unable to capture the magic, with very little new original material penned. Here are some of their classic songs.
The Weight
Gram Parsons might have coined the phrase “cosmic American music”, but has any piece of music ever sounded so cosmic, or indeed so American, as the Band’s signature track? By the time Levon Helm’s road-weary traveller has pulled into Nazareth – not in biblical Galilee, but eastern Pennsylvania, where CF Martin founded the oldest guitar company in the US in 1833 – he’s already “feeling ’bout half-past dead”, with light years on the clock, and no end to his journey in sight. So ingrained is The Weight’s sense of the mythological and metaphysical that even after you learn the more prosaic truth behind its cast of characters – that “Luke” refers to their former Hawks bandmate Jimmy Ray Paulman, “Anna Lee” was a childhood friend of Helm’s and “Crazy Chester” was an eccentric club owner from North Carolina – it still feels as esoteric and inscrutable it did on your first listen. It’s a song that doesn’t sound like it was written, so much as divined – a nugget of gold panned from the riverbed of American musical tradition, even if four-fifths of the group who happened upon it were Canadian.
Chest Fever
According to guitarist Robbie Robertson: “If you like Chest Fever, it’s for god knows what reason … it doesn’t make any kind of sense in the lyrics, in the music, in the arrangement, in anything.” Yet it’s hard to see how the reason could be any more obvious: if you like Chest Fever, it’s because of Garth Hudson. The multi-instrumentalist didn’t sing, and his songwriting credits were scarce, but his peerless ability and technical know-how were a huge, if often overlooked, asset to the Band. Ophelia – on which he almost single-handedly constructs a Dixieland-jazz wall of sound – is perhaps the greater testament to his musicality and versatility, but personal preference means Chest Fever sneaks on to this list ahead of it. Sure, the lyrics were ad-libbed and largely meaningless, but Hudson’s extraordinary Lowrey organ intro (improvised from Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D minor) and the heaving, inexorable groove of the song’s central riff elevates what might have been a throwaway number into a thing of indomitable power and majesty, which for many years served as the centrepiece of their live set.
The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down
In later life, drummer Levon Helm began to dabble in acting, appearing in movies such as Coal Miner’s Daughter,The Right Stuff and, bizarrely, the Steven Seagal eco-thriller Fire Down Below. His greatest performance, however, will always be that of Virgil Caine, the defeated but stoically defiant protagonist of what is possibly the Band’s finest track. Helm inhabits the role of a forlorn Confederate veteran so completely that when he sings – in that high, lonesome, cigarettes-and-rye rasp – about how the last days of the US civil war are “a time I remember oh so well”, you find yourself believing him. In writing it, meanwhile, Robertson displayed remarkable nuance: the lyrics are not an expression of sympathy or support for the Confederacy, much less slavery; they’re the lament of an ordinary man who knows he’s on the wrong side of history, aware that his own suffering – and the excesses of the victors – has already been written out it.
Whispering Pines
Much of the Band’s early magic lay in their rejection of clearly defined roles. Each member had a primary instrument but would chop and change as the music required; songwriting duties were mostly shared between Robertson and nominal lead vocalist Richard Manuel, but there was no de facto leader; they were adaptive, instinctual, egalitarian; a band – the band – rather than a vehicle for individual talent. That began to change after their self-titled second album, as much because of Manuel’s drug-induced inertia as the bitter disputes over Robertson’s royalty shares, but the heartrending Whispering Pines stands out as perhaps the greatest collaboration between the group’s two main songwriters. Manuel composed the melody – so haunting it would have given Brian Wilson shivers – on an out-of-tune piano he kept at home before tasking Robertson with finishing the lyrics; the guitarist responded with a poetic meditation on loneliness that Manuel’s fragile falsetto managed to wring every last ounce of pathos from. It was no accident, as Robertson later explained: “Richard always had this very plaintive attitude in his voice, and in his sensitivity as a person. I tried to follow that, to go with it and find it musically. We both felt very good about this song.”
Up on Cripple Creek
There’s an argument for 1969’s The Band – also known as The Brown Album – as a loose concept album about the people, places and shared experiences of an older, more innocent and fast-vanishing America, an idea not entirely dissimilar to what Ray Davies was doing on the other side of the pond with The Village Green Preservation Society and Arthur. The Band’s worldview, however, was decidedly more blue-collar: they gravitated towards earthier tales of stricken sharecroppers, down-at-heel outlaws and charismatic drunkards. Up on Cripple Creek is the epitome of that, the story of a sanguine, free-wheeling hobo’s cross-country adventures with his “little Bessie”, and likened by the critic Greil Marcus to Harry McClintock’s Big Rock Candy Mountain as “a place where all fears vanish beyond memory”. Underpinned by the bright, sure-handed bounce of Helm’s drumming and Hudson’s funky, undulating wah-wah clavinet, it’s possessed of a roguish, irresistible charm that never fails to have you reaching for the nearest bottle.
Stage Fright
All five members of the Band had cut their teeth as working musicians in the 1950s, when the concept of success was very different to what it would be a decade later when they finally achieved it for themselves. “If you’ve never made a million dollars overnight, like we did, you have no concept of what it can do,” reflected bassist Rick Danko. “Suddenly, we had all the money we needed and people were falling over themselves to make us happy, which meant giving us all the dope we could stand.” Stage Fright was the sound of the Band choking on fame’s poisoned chalice, a theme that ran through the album of the same name – see also WS Walcott Medicine Show’s mockery of showbiz artifice, or Daniel and the Sacred Harp’s Faustian parable about a musician selling his soul – and yielded some of its strongest material. In this case, the creeping anxiety and psychosis – “Your brow is sweating and your mouth gets dry / Fancy people go drifting by / The moment of truth is right at hand / Just one more nightmare you can stand” – belonged to Robertson, whose writing was taking a darker, more personal turn, but the song is brought to life by Danko’s twitchy, nervous vocals.
The Shape I’m In
By 1970, the shy, sweet-natured Richard Manuel had started down the self-destructive path that would ultimately consume him. A heavy drinker since his teens, Manuel subsequently developed a fondness for hard drugs that made him unreliable and accident-prone, and he seemed content to let his considerable songwriting gifts wane – after that year, he never wrote again. Robertson would later recall: “I begged him, I pleaded with him, I offered to become his partner in songwriting, I’d pull him into a song I was working on just to get him in the mood or give him a taste of it, thinking he would go on to follow it up. But he didn’t.” It’s tempting to wonder if The Shape I’m In was one of those songs. It was certainly written about the pianist’s physical and psychological deterioration, and not withstanding the mischievous twinkle in its eye or the Stax beat in its step, the lyrics – “Out of nine lives, I’ve spent seven / Now, how in the world do you get to heaven?” – have the air of an intervention. Manuel sings it with a gruff, haggard charm, but the real stinger comes close to the end, when he lays out the dilemma his bandmates were wrestling with: “Save your neck, or save your brother / Looks like it’s one or the other.” Manuel took his life in a Florida hotel room 16 years later.
When I Paint My Masterpiece
Cahoots, the group’s misfiring fourth album, brought to an end to one of rock’n’roll’s most febrile creative streaks, containing what Rolling Stone would later (and to these ears unfairly) call “Robertson’s first truly awful song”, the unloved The Moon Struck One. Yet it still had its moments, principally this one – a song written by their former paymaster Bob Dylan, but which belongs, in the broader sense of the word, to the Band, and to Levon Helm in particular. The drummer’s characterful vocal captures the essence of a Yankee outsider’s odyssey through Europe – romancing “a pretty little girl from Greece,” dodging lions in the Coliseum, navigating a near-riot in Brussels – far better than Dylan’s own sub-par version, released a couple of months later. Special mention must also go to Garth Hudson’s sparkling turn on the accordion, which lends the song a discombobulating layer of faux-continental sleaze.
It Makes No Difference
Though it might seem like the kind of song more suited to Richard Manuel’s wheelhouse, Robertson wrote It Makes No Difference with Rick Danko in mind, and the bassist knocked it out of the park, out of the neighbourhood, and several area-codes down the road. Simply put, this is one of the rawest, most devastating vocal performances committed to tape, by this band or any other: a seemingly straightforward torch song about the void left by an absent lover, Danko’s high, keening delivery amplifies it to levels of hurt and desperation that are almost as uncomfortable for the listener to hear as they were for Danko. It’s a song that you can’t turn away from, an apocalypse-by-melancholy, whose heartsick protagonist is ceaselessly pursued by low-hanging storm clouds, torrential rains and – just when you think things couldn’t possibly get any worse – a herd of stampeding cattle.
Acadian Driftwood
This list concludes in 1975 with the release of Northern Lights – Southern Cross, after which the original lineup would record only one more studio album, the contractually obligated (and how it showed) Islands. Yet their penultimate effort – discounting those of their latter-day iterations, which featured neither Robertson nor Manuel was a welcome return to form, and even fitful greatness. Acadian Driftwood, the album’s big moment, tells the story of the Great Upheaval of the 1750s, when tens of thousands of Acadian colonists were forcibly deported from Canada by the British, who “signed a treaty and our homes were taken / Loved ones forsaken, they didn’t give a damn”. As a meticulously researched song of historical record, it shares some DNA with The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down, but it’s arguably even more ambitious. Though it’s never made explicit, once Manuel, Helm and Danko start intuitively trading verses, there’s a sense that this story is not being told from a single perspective, but several, with each man expelled from his home into an uncertain future. It was the last time the group’s three lead vocalists would share a song between them, and they couldn’t have chosen a better or more quintessentially Bandish one for the occasion.
Rick Danko – bass, vocals, double bass, fiddle, trombone
In the midst of the country’s turbulence in 1968, five musicians later named simply The Band hunkered down in a salmon-colored house in upstate New York to craft Music From Big Pink, an album that brought the rural folk Americana sound to popular music and to the classic album canon.
Before finding their footing with this debut album, Levon Helm, Robbie Robertson, Rick Danko, Garth Hudson and Richard Manuel played as backing musicians for Ronnie Hawkins and Bob Dylan. After the 1966 Dylan tour, the group hunkered down in the Big Pink house in West Saugerties, N.Y.
You likely know the rest of the story. To mark the 50th anniversary of its release, Music From Big Pink is getting a reissue worthy of one of the greatest albums ever recorded. On August. 31st, the record will receive a new stereo mix on CD and digital, with five outtakes, alternative recordings and an unreleased a cappella version of “I Shall Be Released.” including the new stereo mix of the album’s historic single “The Weight” .
The Band will also release a double-LP vinyl box set of the album, which includes the CD, digital access and a high-res surround mix on Blu-Ray. It also includes a reproduction of the 7-inch single “The Weight” b/w “I Shall Be Released,” and a hardback book with an essay by music journalist David Fricke and photos by Elliott Landy.
The box set of Music from Big Pink’s reissue includes two LPs, CD, Blu-Ray, 7-inch vinyl and a hardback book. And yes, there are limited-edition versions with pink vinyl.
This beautifully packaged 50th-anniversary box set offers a brighter, sharper mix than past reissues, so you can really hear the lust in “Chest Fever,” the sorrow in “Long Black Veil” and the half-past-dead blues in “The Weight.” There’s also an insightful essay by Rolling Stone‘s David Fricke, and a new a cappellaedit of “I Shall Be Released” that shines a lovely spotlight on Richard Manuel’s falling-angel falsetto. If you love the Band, it’s mostly nothing you haven’t heard a couple thousand times before, but little else is needed. A half-century later, the brotherhood of Robbie Robertson, Levon Helm, Rick Danko, Manuel and Garth Hudson still makes you want to join the party. Listen to “Tears of Rage” and you’re right there in the dream: Someone’s delivering a darkly significant monologue (“We carried you in our arms/On Independence Day…”) while your hosts offer you a drink and a seat by the fire. How could you not accept, if only to find out what happens next?
In his 1993 memoir, titled This Wheel’s On Fire, the dearly departed Levon Helm wrote, “We wanted Music From Big Pinkto sound like nothing anyone else was doing. This was our music, honed in isolation from the radio and contemporary trends.”
Although the album was not immediately popular on its release, Music From Big Pink is now widely recognized as one of the most influential albums of all time. July 1st marks Music From Big Pink’s 50th anniversary.
Very quietly, for six years, a band had been brewing. Recruited as the Hawks by Arkansas rockabilly veteran Ronnie Hawkins, the quintet had notched years as road warriors playing Canadian and U.S. clubs and casinos, further seasoned by combat duty on Bob Dylan’s tumultuous 1966 tour, Still in their 20s (save for keyboard polymath GarthHudson), they looked and sounded decades older; the black and white portrait on the album jacket. It was sort of hip to know who they were outside of Toronto.
Few game-changing albums open as quietly as Music From Big Pink, the 1968 debut for The Band. A languid but brief motif of single Telecaster notes wheezing through a Leslie speaker staggers in on top of weary, muffled drum beats, anchored by gospel piano chords. And then Richard Manuel begins singing, his soulful, broken-hearted voice breaking as it climbs:
“We carried you in our arms on Independence Day
And now you’d throw us all aside, and put us all away
Oh what dear daughter ’neath the sun, would treat a father so
To wait upon him, hand and foot, and always tell him ‘no’?”
The antithesis of a conventional, radio-friendly earworm, “Tears of Rage,” written by Manuel and his erstwhile boss, Bob Dylan, was a lagging dirge of inventoried betrayal and lost innocence against brooding organ. A mournful duet of soprano and baritone saxophones punctuated later verses,
They came home to Woodstock with Dylan and put down firm roots for two-years. It was Dylan’s “out of touch” year and they began to spawn this music, this hybrid that took its seeds in the strange pink house. Whereas the Dylan “sound” on recording was filled with Bloom-fielding guitar, Kooper hunt and peck organ and tinkly country-gospelish piano, a fortunate blending of the right people in the right place etc., the Big Pink sound has matured throughout six years picking up favorites along the way and is only basically influenced by the former.
The Dylan tracks on Big Pink already carried the Band’s DNA from their gestation in the Saugerties, N.Y., house that conferred the album’s title, an acknowledgement that the very essence of the group’s ensemble style had been pared away and rebuilt from its foundations as a result of the collaboration.
On “The Weight,” Levon Helm, the group’s lone American, recounted a journey that seemed part pilgrimage, part parable, part shaggy dog story written by guitarist Robbie Robertson. The music itself was at once plainspoken and deliberate, Hearing three distinctive voices build the vocal harmonies on the choruses evoked a brotherhood that itself emerged as part of the album’s mystique and the Band’s identity.
Robbie Robertson makes an auspicious debut here as a composer and lyricist represented by four tunes. Two are stone knockouts: “The Weight” probably the most commercial item in the set with a most contagious chorus that addicts you into singing along… “take a load off Fanny, take a load for free, take a load off Fanny and… you put the load right on me…” “To Kingdom Come” starts out smashing you in the face with weird syncopations and cascading melody lines and then goes into that same groovy bring-it-on-home chorus that earmarks “Weight.”
Hudson’s pitch-bending Lowery organ and Manuel’s piano provided the ensemble’s foundation throughout, with Hudson and producer John Simon adding horns . Vocally, the arrangements highlighted Manuel’s lyrical growl, steeped in Ray Charles’ protean influence, Rick Danko’s buoyant yelp and Helm’s Arkansas drawl; gospel’s call-and-response interplay capped by wide intervals rather than the close harmonies of most bands. Robertson stepped up as a lead singer on just one of his compositions, “To Kingdom Come.”
Individually what makes up this album is Robbie Robertson whose past discography includes “Obviously Five Believers” on Blonde on Blonde, the “live” version of “Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues” and the much ignored Dylan single, “Crawl Out Your Window.” Rick Danko, on bass and vocals, is one of the more outgoing people in the band, he can be depend upon to give you a lot of good matured shit whenever you see him; he of the new breed in bass players, the facile freaks like Harvey Brooks, Jim Fielder and Tim Bogert. He is only different from these three in his tasteful understating. Bassist Rick Danko also steps up with his own Dylan co-write on “This Wheel’s on Fire,” decorated with twinkling keyboard accents on a cheap Roxochord keyboard Hudson had hot-rodded with a telegraph key, while the set’s third Dylan contribution, “I Shall Be Released,” further extends the scriptural atmosphere.
Richard Manuel is affectionately called “Beak” or was at one time; a deft pianist with a strong feeling for country-gospel big pink music. A strong contributing composer: “Tears of Rage,” “In A Station,” “We Can Talk,” and “Lonesome Suzie.” “We Can Talk” offers a hearty mid-tempo rocker framed between Manuel’s rollicking piano and Hudson’s organ arpeggios as the three singers traded overlapping lead vocal lines through lyrics that nodded to the era’s political turmoil with a playful allusion to the group’s Canadian majority. As impressive as that song remains, however, it’s as a balladeer that Manuel would be most compelling. “Lonesome Suzie” is a tender, sympathetic portrait of romantic rejection and abject loneliness that implies Manuel’s own inner pain, while “In a Station” is a hushed reverie that sonically and lyrically evokes a borderland between waking and dreaming.
Garth Hudson is one of the strangest people I ever met. If Harvey Brooks is the gentle grizzly bear of rock and roll then Garth is the gentle brown bear. He is the only person I know who can take a Hammond B3 organ apart and put it back together again or play like that if it’s called for. While backing Dylan on tour he received wide acclaim for his fourth dimensional work on “Ballad Of A Thin Man.”
Levon Helm is a solid rock for the band. He is an exciting drummer with many ideas to toss around. I worked with him in Dylan’s first band and he kept us together like an enormous iron metronome. Levon was the leader of theHawks. If Big Pink consciously rode the throttle to focus on the quintet’s collective sound, they did flex their power on “Chest Fever,” a semi-nonsensical paean to a wild lover that builds upon Hudson’s formidable intro, itself a virtuosic goof on Bach’s Toccata in D minor that would metastasize over the years into a concert highlight.
John Simon, a brilliant producer-composer-musician, finally has this album as a testimonial to his talent. The reason the album sounds so good is Simon. He is a perfectionist and has had to suffer the critical rap in the past for what has not been his error, but now he’s vindicated.
Music From Big Pink set its hooks into fans gradually but deeply. Musicians, on the other hand, were stunned by the Band’s musicianship, songcraft and democratic spirit, inspiring artists from both sides of the pond to search such fellowship, with Eric Clapton and George Harrison just two of the more prominent acolytes. The rich roots music sensibility underpinning the album with folk, gospel, blues and country elements meanwhile planted vital seeds that buttressed the imminent rise of country-rock, as well as the subsequent emergence of Americana at the turn of the millennium.
These are fiery ingredients and results can be expected to be explosive. The chord changes are refreshing, the stories are told in a subtle yet taut way; country tales of real people you can relate to (the daughter in “Tears of Rage”) the singing sometimes loose as field-help but just right. The packaging, including Dylan’s non-Rembrandt cover art, is apropos and honest (there’s that word again). This album was recorded in approximately two weeks. There are people who will work their lives away in vain and not touch it.
Forty years ago on Thanksgiving Day 1976, The Band took the stage at San Francisco’s Winterland for their final performance. Bob Dylan, Eric Clapton, Neil Diamond, Van Morrison, Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, Muddy Waters and others joined Robbie Robertson, Levon Helm, Rick Danko, Garth Hudson and Richard Manuel for the concert event known as The Last Waltz. Director Martin Scorsese’s film of the evening was released in April 1978, setting a high bar for concert movies.
On November 11th, Rhino will mark this landmark anniversary of The Last Waltz with four new editions, including the first time the film has been paired with the soundtrack.
The deluxe editions feature complete audio from the concert, including rehearsals and outtakes, with the 180-gram vinyl version presented in an ornate lift-top box. The sets include rare performances not featured in the film, including “Furry Sings the Blues” (with Joni Mitchell) and “All Our Past Times” (with Eric Clapton). The CD version also features new liner notes from Rolling Stone’s Ben Fong-Torres and David Fricke.
The Collector’s Edition – limited to 2,500 copies worldwide – includes complete audio, a Blu-ray of the film, a second Blu-ray with a rare 1990s interview with Scorsese and Robertson, a photo gallery and 5.1 audio mix of the original album. The set will also include a 300-page book featuring a full replication of Scorsese’s shooting script, rare and previously unseen photos and a foreword by Scorsese.
40th Anniversary Edition (2-CD) – Original soundtrack with newly remastered audio from the original master tapes on two CDs.
40th Anniversary Deluxe Edition (4-CD/1-BD) – Complete audio from the concert, including rehearsals and outtakes, plus The Last Waltz film on Blu-ray.
40th Anniversary Deluxe Edition Vinyl (6-LP) – Complete audio from the concert, including rehearsals and outtakes, pressed on 180-gram vinyl for the first time and presented in a lift-top box.
40th Anniversary Collector’s Edition (4-CD/2-Blu-ray) – Limited to 2,500 copies and due on December 9, this version includes: Complete audio from the concert; The Last Waltz film on Blu-ray; Second Blu-ray disc including a rarely seen interview from the 1990s with Martin Scorsese and Robbie Robertson, photo gallery, and 5.1 audio mix of the original album; 300-page book, bound in red faux-leather with a full replication of Scorsese’s shooting script; rare and previously unseen photos, set sketches, three foldout storyboards, and a foreword by Scorsese and an essay by screenwriter Mardik Martin.
Available as a 4-CD/Blu-ray set and – for the first time – on vinyl as a 6-LP set, the 40th Anniversary Deluxe Edition of the original soundtrack has 54 tracks, including the entire concert, as well as rehearsals and outtakes. This set reprises the track listing from Rhino’s 2002 box set which premiered 24 tracks including “Shadows and Light” and “Furry Sings the Blues” with Joni Mitchell, “Four Strong Winds” with Neil Young, “Hazel” with Bob Dylan, rehearsals with Van Morrison and Dr. John, and more.
The CD version also includes newly-penned liner notes revered music journalists David Fricke and Ben Fong-Torres along with a classic essay from 1977 written by iconic author Emmett Grogan. (Fricke penned the lengthy notes for the 2002 box set, as well.)
The Last Waltz‘s 40th anniversary sets come at a busy time for Robbie Robertson. On November 15, his new memoir Testimony arrives in stores, joined by a companion anthology of the same name released on November 11 by UMe. (Watch for more details on that soon!)
You can peruse the track listing to the upcoming Deluxe Edition at the links below! The 2-CD, 4-CD and 6-LP iterations are due on November 11, with the limited edition set following on December 11. All pre-order links are not yet active, so watch this space!
The Last Waltz: 40th Anniversary (Rhino, 2016)
2-CD: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada
6-LP: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada
4-CD/1-BD: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada
4-CD/2-BD: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada
Track Listing for 4-CD/1-BD edition below:
CD 1
“Theme From The Last Waltz” – with orchestra
“Up On Cripple Creek”
“The Shape I’m In”
“It Makes No Difference”
“Who Do You Love” – with Ronnie Hawkins
“Life Is A Carnival”
“Such A Night” – with Dr. John
“The Weight”
“Down South In New Orleans” – with Bobby Charles
“This Wheel’s On Fire”
“Mystery Train” – with Paul Butterfield
“Caldonia” – with Muddy Waters
“Mannish Boy” – with Muddy Waters
“Stagefright”
CD 2
“Rag Mama Rag”
“All Our Past Times” – with Eric Clapton
“Further On Up The Road” – with Eric Clapton
“Ophelia”
“Helpless” – with Neil Young
“Four Strong Winds” – with Neil Young
“Coyote” – with Joni Mitchell
“Shadows And Light” – with Joni Mitchell
“Furry Sings The Blues” – with Joni Mitchell
“Acadian Driftwood”
“Dry Your Eyes” – with Neil Diamond
“The W.S. Walcott Medicine Show”
“Tura Lura Lura (That’s An Irish Lullaby)” – with Van Morrison
“Caravan” – with Van Morrison
CD 3
“The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down”
“The Genetic Method/Chest Fever”
“Baby Let Me Follow You Down” – with Bob Dylan
“Hazel” – with Bob Dylan
“I Don’t Believe You (She Acts Live We Never Have Met)” – with Bob Dylan
“Forever Young” – with Bob Dylan
“Baby Let Me Follow You Down” (Reprise) – with Bob Dylan
“I Shall Be Released”
Jam #1
Jam #2
“Don’t Do It”
“Greensleeves” (From Movie Soundtrack)
CD 4
The Last Waltz Suite
“The Well”
“Evangeline” – with Emmylou Harris
“Out Of The Blue”
“The Weight” – with The Staples
“The Last Waltz Refrain”
Theme from “The Last Waltz” (*)
Concert Rehearsal
“King Harvest (Has Surely Come)”
“Tura Lura Lura (That’s An Irish Lullaby)”
“Caravan”
“Such A Night”
“Rag Mama Rag”
“Mad Waltz” – Sketch track for “The Well”
Stereo Ideas
“The Last Waltz” – Instrumental
“The Last Waltz – Sketch
Disc 5 – Blu-ray (Film available in 5.1 Surround Sound Mix)
“Theme From The Last Waltz” – with orchestra
“Up On Cripple Creek”
“The Shape I’m In”
“It Makes No Difference”
“Who Do You Love” – with Ronnie Hawkins
“Life Is A Carnival”
“Such A Night” – with Dr. John
“Down South In New Orleans” – with Bobby Charles
“Mystery Train” – with Paul Butterfield
“Mannish Boy” – with Muddy Waters
“Stagefright”
“Further On Up The Road” – with Eric Clapton
“Ophelia”
“Helpless” – with Neil Young
“Coyote” – with Joni Mitchell
“Dry Your Eyes” – with Neil Diamond
“Tura Lura Lura (That’s An Irish Lullaby)” – with Van Morrison
“Caravan” – with Van Morrison
“The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down”
“Baby Let Me Follow You Down” – with Bob Dylan
“I Don’t Believe You (She Acts Live We Never Have Met)” – with Bob Dylan
“Forever Young” – with Bob Dylan
“Baby Let Me Follow You Down” (Reprise)
“I Shall Be Released” – Finale
“The Well”
“Evangeline” – with Emmylou Harris
“Out Of The Blue”
“The Weight” – with The Staples
“The Last Waltz Refrain”
“Theme From The Last Waltz”
‘Cahoots’ celebrates its 45th Anniversary!, This whole album is a masterpiece. Seems to be much more appreciated now than the initial fan reactions. Cahoots is the fourth studio album release by the American/Canadian rock group The Band . It was released in 1971 to mixed reviews, and was their last album of original material for four years. The album’s front cover was painted by New York artist/illustrator Gilbert Stone,
“Run away Run away” it’s the restless age, sings the Band at the beginning of Cahoots (Capitol SMAS 651) and they mean it. They also mean it when they sing of the endlessness of the river, admonishing the listener that “You can ride on it or drink it,/Poison it or dam it,/Fish in it and wash in it,/Swim in it and you can die in it, run you river run …” Cahoots is about finding a place for yourself in the restless age.
The mood of the album is filled with a “tinge of extinction.” As the chaos of the carnival is played off against the timelessness of the river, the Band mourns, always more in sorrow than in anger, the passing away of the things they have grown old with and the failure of anything of consequence to rise up in their place. “How you gonna replace human hands?” they ask us in “Last of the Blacksmiths.” And, “How can you sleep when the whistle don’t moan?” in “Where Do We Go From Here.” “Your neighborhood isn’t there anymore,” they jeer in “SmokeSignal.” “Run away Run away — it’s the restless age,” but, “the car broke down when we had just begun.”
Very complex song structures and features some of The Bands best vocals.
Allen Toussaint and Van Morrison. Where on The Band we were made to experience a mythical view of the past as a present reality, Cahoots is merely sometimes about the past, and then only insofar as the past can be made to comment in a direct way on the present. Unlike The Band, Cahoots endistances us from the past, constantly reminding us of what was then and what is now.
In Cahoots, the notion of the commentator is stressed over that of the participant. The narrator of these songs is most often observing others and in the process drawing explicit contrasts, comparisons, and morals. Instead of seeing phenomenon in motion, as they were being experienced, we see them as fixed entities to be described or dealt with: the process is now less important than the conclusions to be drawn about the process. At the same time, the orientation and musical texture is constantly changing so that we are left with the feeling of experiencing things through a stylistic kaleidoscope.
“4% Pantomime,” another song about performing, is named after the fact that the difference between Johnny Walker Black and Johnny Walker Red is 4%. It is also for the 4% of Mr. Van Morrison’s performance which had to be seen, not heard. Unlike “Stage Fright,” which analyzed the artist’s dilemma, “4% Pantomime” is simply about being a working artist. Many of the Band’s songs have been in the first person but none of them literal representations of themselves. This one even uses real names on the choruses, as two old fashioned juicers VanMorrison and Richard Manuel — coax as much feeling as they can out of each other.
“Last of the Blacksmiths” is a crucial song embodying more than any other the definition of the “tinge of extinction” and “isolated artist” themes of the album. Sung and played in a desperate style, the lyrics parallel the question of the blacksmith (“how can you replace human hands”) with the question of the musician: “frozen fingers at the keyboard, could this be the reward?” Unfortunately, the acuity of perception then trails off in a typical bit of over-writing and the rest of the song is sustained more by the excellence of the performance than by its lyrical content.
“Where Do We Go From Here” comes dangerously close to being merely topical. Cute rhymes like “Just one more victim of fate/Like California state” do nothing to add to what the song has. The music, while brilliantly put together, has a stiffness which makes it once again forbidding. Like every cut on the album there is something to recommend it: in this case, the opening lines of Rick Danko’s beautiful vocal.
“Shoot Out In Chinatown” is a fairly grim story that makes the point that things cannot be shoved under the rug, to wit: “Buddha has lost his smile/But swears that we will meet again/In just a little while.” The music has more momentum and freshness than most things on the album and the cut is sustained exceptionally well. One of the most enjoyable things on the record.
“Smoke Signal” is a light play on the extinction theme. In “Chinatown” Robertson is talking about deliberate actions of the state while on “Smoke Signal” the humorous allusions seem to be to the process by which people merely lose control, instead of being actively forced to surrender it. Musically, it is a powerful song with some brilliant lines that stick in the mind, especially: “When they’re torn out by the roots/Young brothers join in cahoots.”
If “Life In A Carnival” is an overture, The song features a lively Dixieland horn chart courtesy of AllenToussaint then “The River Hymn” was surely intended as a finale, a sort of ceremonial piece, and on it one’s ultimate impression of Cahoots must rest. It is surely the most ambitious thing the group has ever attempted. Lyrically, it is the culmination of Robertson’s growing style. It is so cinematic, that as it is heard the movie possibilities flash in front of you uncontrollably. Everything described is not only easy to visualize but is, in the listener’s mind, inevitably visualized.
“When I Paint My Masterpiece,” a Bob Dylan song making its recorded debut here as the second selection, is another welcome track, buoyed by mandolin and accordion in a charming arrangement appropriate to its tale of an odd trip to Europe.
Several of the songs’ lyrics come across as half-baked film scenarios, but they fail to be evocative, and they are paired to music lacking in structure. The failure is solely in the writing The Band sounds as good as ever playing the songs, with singers Richard Manuel Levon Helm and Rick Danko all performing effectively and primary instrumentalist Garth Hudson filling in the arrangements cleverly.
Rick Danko – bass, acoustic guitar, vocals
Levon Helm – drums, mandolin, upright bass, vocals
Garth Hudson – organ, piano, accordion, tenor and baritone saxophones
Richard Manuel – piano, drums, organ, slide guitar, vocals
Robbie Robertson – guitars, piano
Additional personnel
Allen Toussaint – brass arrangements on “Life Is a Carnival”
Van Morrison – vocals on “4% Pantomime”
Libby Titus – backing vocals on “The River Hymn”[6]
Mark Harman – engineer
Maybe it’s difficult to overstate the contributions to modern day music that began with a group of five young men with no clear frontman. But the Band which released its eponymous masterpiece 46 years ago this week — brought a swollen heart and a down-home groove to the rock n’ roll landscape that was unprecedented at its time. Not that surprising, considering the group was referred to as “the best damn band in the world” before they even settled on a name. The Band is the eponymous second studio album by The Band, released on September 22nd, 1969. It is also known as The Brown Album. According to Rob Bowman’s liner notes for the 2000 reissue, The Band has been viewed as a concept album, with the songs focusing on people, places and traditions associated with an older version of Americana. Thus, the songs on this album draw from historic themes for “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down”,“King Harvest (Has Surely Come)” and Richard Manuel’s “Jawbone” (which was composed in the unusual 6/4 time signature.)
In the mid-sixties, four rag-tag kids from Canada were lured to the open road by Rockabilly legend Ronnie Hawkins and his teenage drummer, Levon Helm. Unlike the rest of his bandmates, Helm was the son of a cotton farmer from Turkey Scratch, Arkansas and brought the authenticity of Delta blues with him wherever he went.
He was eventually recognized by fans and friends alike as the heart of the group’s sound, sharing vocal responsibilities with bassist Rick Danko and multi-instrumentalist Richard Manuel. But it was Helm who took the reins in four of the songs on that self-titled release with his signature country drawl. Two of those songs became timeless Band favorites- “Up on Cripple Creek” and “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down,” a hypothetical civil war tune overflowing with classic Americana.
It is a remarkable song, the rhythmic structure, the voice of Levon and the bass line with the drum accents and then the heavy close harmony of Levon, Rick and Richard Manuel in the theme, make it seem impossible that this isn’t some oral tradition material handed down from father to son straight from that winter of ’65 to today.
… I kept coming back and coming back until now I am prepared to say that, depending on one’s mood, these songs stand, each on its own, as equal sides of a twelve-faceted gem .
Just a month before its release, the Band took to the stage at Woodstock on the final night of the three-day festival, playing seven songs from their 1968 studio debut, Music From Big Pink. Along with generally favored reviews, this earlier record fell flat with certain critics, The album which would eventually be referred to adoringly as The Brown Album.
[The Beatles’] Abbey Road captivates me as might be expected, but The Band is even better, an A-plus record if I’ve ever rated one. That should come as no surprise to those of you — which I assume means most of you — who regarded Music From Big Pink as epochal. Though I somehow always managed to avoid saying so in print, I didn’t.
Except for Dylan, [guitarist Robbie Robertson] is the only American songwriter to write good fictional/dramatic songs… and the only one to master the semi-literate tone, in which grammatical barbarisms and colloquial ellipses transcend affectation to enrich and qualify a song’s meaning.
Months before recording the LP, Robertson, the group’s primary songwriter, had no idea just how iconic their work would become. Robbie was asked how seriously the group took their craft.
“Just seriously enough to satisfy us, enough so that we can smile at one another when we’re through playing.”
And you can feel it; that satisfaction especially in these songs. The musicianship between all five members on the album is electric, heartfelt, and casual. With the ping of every ride pattern, you can practically sense Helm’s broad, boyish grin behind that drum kit.
The Band released five more albums with the same lineup before Robertson’s departure, taking an overwhelming majority of disputed songwriting credits with him — an issue that left some of the remaining members bitter for decades. None of those records would come close to the success of The Brown Album.
Not bad for a few Canadian boys and a dusty farmer.
After unsuccessfully attempting sessions at a studio in New York, The Band set up shop in the pool house of a home the group rented in West Hollywood. The home, located at 8850 Evanview Drive, was once owned by Judy Garland, Wally Cox and, at the time the group worked there, Sammy Davis, Jr. According to Robbie Robertson, the location was chosen to give the songs a more Basement Tapes-like feel in what was termed “a clubhouse concept.” Work was later completed at The Hit Factory in New York City.
The album was also reissued in 2009 by Audio Fidelity as a limited edition gold CD. Remastered from a 1980s CD pressing, the album also included a single b-side “Get Up Jake” as a bonus track. originally it was dropped from the line-up at the last minute, either because the band felt it was too similar to another track on the album, or because there physically wasn’t enough room on the album.
The album includes many of The Band’s best-known and critically acclaimed songs, In 1998 Q magazine readers voted The Band the 76th greatest album of all time. Upon hearing the record one critic declared it better than Abbey Road, which had been released four days following, writing that The Band’s LP is an “A-plus record if I’ve ever rated one.” He ranked it as the fourth best album of the year in his ballot for Jazz & Pop magazine’s annual critics poll.
The Fat Angel Sings 