On this month’s problem of Uncut, we have a good time The Band’s 30 biggest songs. As a particular bonus, right here’s one other 10 songs we didn’t have room for within the journal, as chosen by Richard Thompson, Jim James, Nathan Salsburg, Amy Helm, Steve Wynn and extra…
GOIN’ TO ACAPULCO
(The Basement Tapes, 1975)
TOM RUSSO, ROLLING BLACKOUTS COASTAL FEVER: Now and again I return to The Basement Tapes, and this tune specifically. On the face of it, the character Dylan paints is form of determined and pathetic, however the supply and the ragged, soulful backing The Band convey to the tune elevates his longing into one thing spiritual. You possibly can really feel the self-loathing hangover he’s about to crash into as soon as the tequila wears off. Clearly having Dylan as a songwriter doesn’t harm, however The Band do one thing all nice backing bands do – know your position and keep on with it. They get out of the best way of the vocal, and solely step in with the lightest touches to assist it take flight. No particular person is doing something outstanding, however the sum of the components is immediately recognisable and iconic. You possibly can inform they’re nonetheless feeling it out, however the essence of the tune is there. Doing something extra can be a bit cheesy. There’s a Jim James & Calexico model with hovering vocals and horns, which is nice otherwise, however to me, the unique model remains to be one of the best. Possibly it’s demo-itis, however there may be magic within the first few renditions of a tune, when the concrete hasn’t set on it but. They’re within the zone, using the chord modifications, and we’re fortunate sufficient to be sitting on the sofa within the nook, listening to the tune be born.
TOO MUCH OF NOTHING
(The Basement Tapes, 1975)
LILLY HIATT: My dad and mom [singer-songwriter John Hiatt and film sound editor Isabella Wood] listened to The Band so much once I was rising up, and naturally I knew stuff like “Up On Cripple Creek”. However once I was in school I received into vinyl with my roommate, and I purchased Stage Fright. In order that’s what sort of locked in my love for The Band. Each tune on there resonated. Stuff like “Stage Fright” and “The Hearsay” simply sounded so free.
“Too A lot Of Nothing”is a really particular tune to me too. After I was at a turning level in my life – I feel it was 2016, once I put a brand new band collectively and we went on the street – John, the guitar participant, performed The Basement Tapes within the van. I’d by no means actually listened to that file earlier than, but it surely simply gave me a sense of a way of freedom and belonging once more, with these new mates I had. It actually hit me that I used to be turning a web page and that every part was going to be okay.
I all the time appreciated the sad-sounding songs with forlorn melodies, and “Too A lot Of Nothing” has that. Listening to that tune opened up a brand new mindset for me. I used to be about to make some music of my very own once more and I used to be making these connections with new folks. And I used to be on the tail-end of heartbreak, which takes its time. So this was only the start of placing that behind me. And remembering how music strikes you thru the difficulties of life.
I really like The Basement Tapes as a result of it appears like they’re all simply having loads of enjoyable. And so they’re all so relaxed. These lyrics – “Say hey to Valerie / Say hey to Marion” – are simply so cool. Once we had been listening to it within the van, I used to be sitting there considering, ‘What’s Dylan speaking about?’ The Basement Tapes remains to be mysterious to me. It’s like, ‘The place’s he going with this?’ But it surely appeared like his mates, The Band, had been liberating that in him. Dylan sounds free and glad, like he’s together with his buddies. The mix of him with these guys looks like they’re simply chopping free.
BESSIE SMITH
(The Basement Tapes, 1975)
NATHAN SALSBURG: After I was 13 – taking part in Nintendo, listening to my mother’s copy of The Basement Tapes and having zero familiarity with a historic personage named Bessie Smith – the picture known as to thoughts by this tune was of my grandmother’s first cousin. Aunt Bessie was a big and kindly outdated white woman from rural Western Kentucky who made scrumptious yeast rolls and lived in a tiny residence in a grim six-storey senior-living facility with two small home windows looking over a liminal zone of auto-body retailers and an interstate freeway. That psychological affiliation endured lengthy after I found the singer Bessie Smith – brightest star within the pre-World Struggle II feminine ‘blues shouter’ pantheon – and, considerably wilfully, it nonetheless does, as appreciating the tune is made significantly simpler should you can keep away from associating the topic with the vastly profitable recording and performing artist. If you happen to can’t, you might discover the entire conceit grating: a younger white man’s fantasy of the Empress of the Blues’ “candy love” pining away for him down the street, suspended in historical past and imprecise circumstance, just like the ‘old-time blues’ she sings. After all, the trick might in reality be to affiliate the narrator with somebody aside from Rick Danko. He wouldn’t have had a lot of an opportunity with my Aunt Bessie, both.
LONG BLACK VEIL
(Music From Huge Pink, 1968)
BILL MACKAY: There are some actually potent issues in The Band’s model of this tune. Whenever you’re doing a canopy, there are methods to do it the place you utilize the musical components exterior the voices, or exterior the story, to intensify the phrases. On “Lengthy Black Veil”, it looks like they use sure musical components, consciously or not, to sharpen the story that’s unfolding. One factor that hit me was the accentuation of the piano within the refrain concerning the girl’s steps traipsing via the hills, on this hypnotic form of method, like a distant staccato sound. And the organ, at varied factors, actually appears to me to be on this ethereal space, as if supporting the thought of someone talking from past the grave. It looks like that spaciousness is in there, but it’s subterranean too. It’s ghostly.
Within the second verse, when the decide is asking for the narrator’s alibi, there’s one thing very low – both a trombone or organ – that basically appears to push that concept of an imperious decide and the seriousness of the trial. Listening to The Band’s voices, Levon, Rick and Richard all appear to be characterised by harm in loads of locations. And with completely different flavours of harm. With Levon, there’s one thing about him that’s very defiant in loads of his vocalisations, with actual energy, but in addition anger too. In Richard Manuel there’s usually a weariness and a resignation in his voice. And with Rick Danko there’s this plaintive craving.
Past that, it appears to me that they harmonised on this tune otherwise than loads of teams may’ve finished. There’s one thing pure about the best way their voices combine, not like The Seaside Boys, who all had completely different vocal qualities however in concord they might usually sound like a chord. However The Band’s voices are actually distinct. It looks like they’re branches from the identical massive oak tree – they’ve developed otherwise and tangle in numerous methods, so that you hear all of the completely different timbres of their voices. I feel that craving and that weariness form of pulls them collectively. It actually matches this story, which is so devastating.
IN A STATION
(Music From Huge Pink, 1968)
JIM JAMES, MY MORNING JACKET: The final time I noticed Richard was in an area station out close to the sting of the recognized universe. I assume he may inform I used to be feeling just a little misplaced and so, in a fatherly gesture, smiled and motioned for me to observe. We started to stroll via the halls and streets of the station and up the face of a man-made mountain within the “Pure Environment” dome positioned throughout the center of the ship’s huge complicated interior workings. This was a spot constructed to really feel identical to dwelling, the place most of the crops and animals had been contained – each for farming and survival, but in addition for magnificence. The designers needed everybody to attempt to preserve some sense of connection to the pure world we needed to go away behind once we left earth. I may inform he was making an attempt to point out me some larger fact right here, so we silently sat and gazed for some time. On and off he would hum some stunning melody I knew from someplace however couldn’t fairly place. Finally I stretched out on the bottom and drifted off to sleep within the synthetic moonlight of the dome’s 24-hour earth cycle. Because the neon solar started to rise and produce its gentle to life, I drowsily got here to in that unusual in-between – unsure if I used to be dreaming or awake. I observed that he was already up, or maybe had by no means even fallen asleep, and sat cross-legged, gazing out from our mountaintop over the inexperienced panorama dotted with folks working in it far under. “Isn’t all people dreaming?” I requested. “Then the voice you hear is actual,” he whispered. Out of all of the idle scheming, I used to be grateful he had given me one thing to really feel.
THE UNFAITHFUL SERVANT
(The Band, 1969)
RICHARD THOMPSON: I’d argue that the Band’s second album is among the strongest within the historical past of rock/common music, though it doesn’t match comfortably into any style, being an ideal mix of American roots – rock‘n’roll, jazz, Appalachian, gospel, R&B, blues and nation. Three nice vocalists, rhythm part to die for, fantastic songs, killer guitarist, and Garth because the genius behind the keys!
“The Untrue Servant” has biblical undertones within the title and the story, however the lyrics borrow from nation and common music, and presumably Dylan – however not to remove from their originality of favor. Musically, you would say The Band just about invented this laid-back, four-square rhythm with songs like “The Weight”. The vocal by Rick Danko is craving and heartfelt, however the icing on the cake are the horns. I all the time beloved the tracks the place the group performed the horn components themselves, with that slight Salvation Military creakiness. The Allen Toussaint stuff is slicker clearly, however for emotion… Apparently Garth went again in with John Simon after the observe was laid down, and so they added soprano sax and tuba – an unlikely mix, however they obtain one thing outstanding right here. Word little touches just like the B5 underneath the minor 6 chord on the bridge, and the actual fact the tune ends every part a semitone above the tone centre of the piece. A pleasure of a bit of music amongst many joys on this album, equalled in achievement by little since.
ROCKIN’ CHAIR
(The Band, 1969)
PETER BREWIS, FIELD MUSIC: Once we first began doing Area Music, The Band had been essential. Me and my brother [David] and Andy [Moore], who’s nonetheless an occasional third member, listened to the brown album so much in our 20s. That kind of looseness, the thought of The Band taking part in collectively. I bear in mind watching a basic albums episode on the brown album, the place they stated they’d rehearse a tune throughout the day, get drunk at night time, then within the morning they’d attempt to begin recording it, having discovered it the day earlier than. That’s what we ended up making an attempt to do. We’d rehearse a tune within the afternoon after which nearly half-remember it within the morning. We thought it might give some mystical looseness to it, some additional Band vibes to it.
We truly recorded “The Night time They Drove Outdated Dixie Down” for our first single launch. I feel we did it fairly effectively, however simply thought, ‘That is silly, I don’t know why we’ve finished it.’ However we beloved them a lot that we truly tried to do a canopy of it. Three lads from Sunderland in all probability shouldn’t be singing concerning the South rising once more!
“Rockin’ Chair” is a type of songs the place you’ll be able to actually hear the voices on it. You actually hear the looseness. They’re primarily doing three-part harmonies. You have a tendency to think about three-part harmonies as a technical factor, like The Beatles or The Eagles used to do, a homogenous factor. However The Band aren’t like that in any respect. The three of them – Manuel, Danko and Helm – have comparable voices, however they’re additionally very kind of private. They mix, however not in a homogenous method. And it makes it really feel extra polyphonic. So it’s their individuality, I suppose, that comes via on “Rockin’ Chair”.
To not dismiss Robbie Robertson as a songwriter, however I feel it’s the singers who make the tune really feel like an outdated one. It’s positively received an identical really feel to John Wesley Harding getting into. There’s a number of rhymes in “Rockin’ Chair”, which could appear trite within the palms of one other songwriter, but it surely by no means does right here. And I’ve by no means found out why it feels so genuine to me. I can’t put my finger on it, which is perhaps the entire thing about The Band themselves. The tune nearly makes you consider in some form of magic, one thing intangible. Even should you break it down, it nonetheless doesn’t reveal every part about itself.
DANIEL AND THE SACRED HARP
(Stage Fright, 1970)
IAN FELICE, THE FELICE BROTHERS: What I really like about this tune is the strangeness of it. The theme itself is just not uncommon, everyone knows numerous parables concerning the lack of one’s soul by the pursuit of energy. However there’s a theatricality to the association and vocalisation of the tune that provides it a novel high quality. The story is a Faustian one a couple of character named Daniel. There’s no outlined setting within the tune, though some would argue that the reference of a whippoorwill locations it in an earlier, legendary America. Daniel finds a method, via deception and wealth, to accumulate a sacred harp that he believes will grant him salvation or some form of undefined energy. After all, he instantly sees the folly of his actions and confides in his brother and father who provide him little sympathy. The transaction in the end leaves him soulless and damned. The tune has two predominant vocalists, Rick Danko (Daniel) and Levon Helm (the narrator) and opens with a refrain they sing in concord, bringing to thoughts the custom of rural choral music that the title references. The refrain doesn’t occur once more till the top, which bookends the story with the unusual picture of Daniel dancing merrily via a discipline of clover holding the instrument that can in the end spell his doom. The Band by no means performed this tune stay. It options Richard Manuel on drums, which I all the time love and provides the tune a particular high quality. I rank the buying and selling of vocals between Levon and Danko to be the most effective examples of this basic hallmark of The Band’s model.
4% PANTOMIME
(Cahoots, 1971)
STEVE WYNN: Robbie Robertson was one fortunate man. Don’t get me unsuitable, he was an amazing songwriter and all. The most effective. You don’t want me to let you know that. However he additionally occurred to have been blessed with three of one of the best singers on the planet to ship his muse. Superb.
By myself private favorite Band tune, “4% Pantomime”, Robbie will get dealt a fortunate hand from the underside of the deck by selecting up but another nice singer on board in Van Morrison, setting his compositional contraption into movement with Van and Richard Manuel duking it out like songbird variations of Frazier and Ali, whereas grousing about unhealthy tour routing and shady poker tables.
They begin out frivolously buying and selling jabs after which it’s a full flurry of fists by the final minute to a break up resolution, Van laying out a fierce rat-a-tat combo on “with out the slightest blush” whereas Richard performs rope-a-dope. Then Van wildly flails on the ultimate refrain earlier than they hug it out in a barrage of “la-la”s on the finish. It’s wonderful.
With singers like that, you would put a few chords behind an electronic mail to your agent a couple of venue screwing up the hospitality rider and nonetheless have a stone basic. However this tune is greater than that. There’s some fact within the ‘it’s the singer, not the tune’ maxim, however a list of nice songs makes all of it work higher. And Robbie’s received lots.
ATLANTIC CITY
(Jericho, 1993)
AMY HELM: It’s not my favorite ever tune of theirs, however “Atlantic Metropolis” is particular as a result of it jogs my memory that I received a entrance row seat to observe the reinvention of one of many nice singers in The Band: my dad. And I received to observe it occur in actual time.
My father was identified with throat most cancers in 1998 and went via therapies and misplaced his voice utterly. He couldn’t sing a notice, he may simply whisper, so he targeted on drumming. Then after years and rehab, he began to slowly sing once more at his Midnight Rambles that he in-built Woodstock at his dwelling. At these concert events, he took these tiny steps in direction of reinvention. And the primary tiny step that he took in direction of singing once more was leaving the drum package, coming as much as the entrance of the stage together with his mandolin in hand, and making an attempt to sing “Atlantic Metropolis”.
Typically the notes had been there, and generally they’d fall out from underneath him due to the scar tissue and the harm finished from radiation on his vocal chords. So I received to face subsequent to him at a microphone. He’d have me sing unison and maintain the melody for him just a little bit, as a result of generally it was there and generally it wasn’t. And I assume I embrace it as a Band tune as a result of it took such braveness and courageous dedication to serving the tune that received him to that time.
I additionally suppose that selecting to cowl it on one in every of their ‘90s albums – of their second iteration of The Band, with out Robbie – is only a cool chapter in any band’s historical past anyway. What do you do whenever you’ve reached your peak and also you’re making an attempt to reinvent your self? How will we preserve transferring as working musicians? How do we discover the songs that match? And the place do we discover that magic of these voices, twisting round on that refrain? I feel the recorded model of “Atlantic Metropolis” is a wonderful testimony to them persevering with to attempt to try this, within the midst of every part you would presumably think about to pile on prime of your self: medication and every part past, then his reinvention and rediscovery of his voice within the 2000s at The Midnight Rambles.
After I was little or no, I didn’t actually perceive what The Band was. I assumed The Band was Rick Danko’s band, and the one tune I actually cared about was “Stage Fright”, as a result of that was my favorite. So once I was six or seven years outdated, I’d peek across the nook if I used to be at a present, and watch them do this tune. And my dad was Rick’s drummer. That’s form of how I considered it in my thoughts. Which is because it ought to’ve been! Stuff like …Huge Pink was by no means actually performed round the home. It was principally Ray Charles and Muddy Waters that my dad would mess around the home, not The Band’s information.
What made them distinctive? Three voices which can be so distinctive as lead singers, however that really mix in that harmonic overtone. That’s uncommon, proper? Garth added a color and a tone to it that kicked it method out of anything that it may have been categorised as. And Robbie’s guitar-playing alone had its personal form of grit and differentiation.
Somebody gave me a bootleg of them after they had been Levon And The Hawks. I used to be listening to a few of it – I feel it was Richard singing “Lucille”, or perhaps it was my dad, I can’t bear in mind – however they’re singing these Chuck Berry and Little Richard tunes. And so they had been all so younger. I’m going to my dad, “How did you guys sound like that by the point you had been 17? It’s not simply that you would rip into these notes and sing that music with such method and prowess, but it surely’s that your individual voices had been rising. I don’t hear you imitating anybody. I truly hear Richard’s entire factor rising.” And he was like, “Effectively, it wasn’t that we had been such geniuses. It’s as a result of we had been taking part in seven days every week, and on Sundays, we had been taking part in a matinee and a late present. And after we had been finished taking part in these reveals, we’d go to a rehearsal area and play for an additional two hours.”
