The Band: why were they so revered?*

John Simon produced the 1st 2 and The Last Waltz. That may have been a big factor for the aesthetics of those works vs. Cahoots and such

 

I totally disagree.

 

As it is on "Unfaithful Servant"

 

Yeah, that's a good one too. His voice is not great, but he gives it all, which kind of makes it great (if that makes any sense...)

 

That's because first and foremost they were the best bar band there has ever been. Years and years of touring and backing up before their first release. Incredibly talented guys. Sad that only two are left.

 

The "back-to-basics" sound of Music From Big Pink certainly hit a chord with the big name musicians of the day. It's kind of funny how the Beach Boys did that first with their Wild Honey album, but nobody hip paid that too much attention....

The big difference, IMO, was their connection to Bob Dylan. I believe some fans thought Dylan wrote the Big Pink songs, or played on them, since it was known that he painted their album cover art, as well as their status as his backing band. IMO, it was a combination of their innate talent and their 'hip' connotations that made people take notice of them. They succeeded almost exclusively through their music and word-of-mouth, not from their girl-appeal or fashion sense.

 

Good point...

Well, let's have some counterpoints, then. You really don't think the cheesy sounding talk box guitar Robbie plays on Moondog Matinee, for example, immediately dates that record to 1973? Compared to "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down", which sounds like it could have been played in 1869, let alone 1969 (to paraphrase Greil Marcus)? Or how Northern Lights and Islands embrace that typical mid-70's slick L.A. studio sound (despite being recorded in an old bordello), the complete opposite to the basement of Big Pink? And, let's face it, very few performances on Earth personify -for good or ill- '70's Southern California pop rock like The Last Waltz.

The Band revolutionized popular music in 1968. Where the hell did it all go wrong?

 

I can't blame 'em for wanting to do different things and I don't at all think those records "almost sounds like to completely different bands." Sure, the surface of the music got shinier, you're right, they lost the charm of that front porch, informal seeming music making (even if that always was a big of a illusion, it's not like they weren't carefully rehearsed craftsmen and professionals), but I'm not sure that was so much a matter of sonics as it was spirit.

I just think The Band members threw their talents away with drugs, lost the bonhomie that make them special with infighting over money, and maybe Robertson just kinda ran out of things to say or at least the passion to say them -- not every songwriter has 20 or 30 years of continuous great original material in 'em, in fact, few do.

So they made those first three albums, which were terrific, and then the caliber of the output dropped off and got spotty. There was still good stuff from time to time -- "Acadian Driftwood," "Life Is a Carnival," "Knockin' Lost John," "Christmas Must Be Tonight," "Ophelia" -- and even great stuff -- "It Makes No Difference." But that "it" that they had, that spirit, was gone. That's OK, they weren't the first or the last band to fall apart thanks to drugs and money, and while the turn of events was personally tragic for some of the members, the group made the great music that they made when they made it and it's immortal. And it's enough, taken on its own terms. I don't somehow feel I need the rest of the group's output to be as good in order to validate or something how good the really good stuff is, which it seems like -- I'm not saying this of you, but others who pop up in these kinds of threads -- people seem to need.

 

Well, it was also the material -- that kind of sense, especially on the second album, that connected rock to an earlier America, and the storytelling songs, the literary writerly and historical quality of something like "King Harvest" with it's haiku flashes intercut with narrative historical fiction, and a kind of sense of an eternal American present. Wild Honey was a slight album. "Darlin'" and "Let the Wind Blow," etc. were just kind of blah, conventional lyrics. It certainly wasn't "The Weight," or "Lonesome Suzie" or like the Dylan numbers on there And then it was the musicianship, Wild Honey was just kind of musically a little tick-tock piano and organ and the singing.... The Band's impact on their peers among musicians I think had a lot to do with the group feel especially in the Danko-Helm-Manuel rhythm section. But no doubt there was a hipster quotient to the Band from the Dylan connection and very much part of Albert Grossman's efforts to market the group, and being the kind of coolly uncool rustics from the hills was kind of the perfect image for the time.

 

No
Name a band any band that has covered the type of material on Moondog Matinee better than what The Band did
Northern Lights & Islands are so different to anything I was listening to at the time which btw was not slick LA Studio stuff
I prefer Northern Lights over Big Pink
Although Islands is not the strongest album going around I still prefer it to any Eagles album.
I really can't see the connection that you are making with The Band & 70's Southern Californian pop rock apart from the fact that The Last Waltz was done in San Francisco

 

There was such a huge BS content in music. Psychedelia. Manufactured pop. The first rock stars. Guitar heros. Ego driven dreck. The music had become unmoored from its roots.

These guys came along with none of that, they sounded real, unselfconscious, like they had descended from the hills with their instruments and recorded songs that had existed forever. They were playing then kind of music that had LEAD to rock and roll, music that most of the musicians recognized immediately and "yeah, that's why I started playing, that's what I really love." They played as a faceless (or 5 faced) unit.

Their biggest impact was on other musicians, but it was massive.

 

Absolutely- clearly as time went on The Band had to change their whole approach to music making to avoid becoming stale- I doubt any of them wanted to just keep making The Band over and over again.

I think that's why Northern Lights came as such a surprise- given the (IMO) mediocrity of their previous couple of studio efforts, I don't think anyone (even The Band themselves, probably) thought they had a record like NL/SC in 'em. Too bad they couldn't keep that up...

Oh, of course. No one band is going to knock it out of the park with the same level of consistency on every album. No question, The Band had a helluva run.

Well, I freely admit I am not a fan of Moondog Matinee (it's easily my least favourite Band album) but as far as a "Rock And Roll Covers" album goes -and I almost hate to say this out of risk that I'll sound like a g-ddamn McCartney fanboy- give me Run Devil Run anyday over Moondog Matinee.

As do I (though not by much)- Northern Lights is my favourite Band album.

We agree here too Only Eagles I have any time for are Hotel California and The Long Run and even then I would take Islands over either of 'em. Hell, I'd almost that Moondog Matinee over The Eagles...

You really don't hear the connection in their later music? Aside from Robertson producing Neil Diamond and playing on a few of Joni Mitchell's LP's, Danko and Helm playing with Neil Young? Make no mistake, once The Band made the move to Mailbu from Woodstock (mainly thanks to David Geffen, BTW) the Avacado Mafia welcomed them with open arms. I suggest a couple of books for your perusal, both by the same author, Barney Hoskyns: Across The Great Divide and Hotel California. Divide is a Band bio (probably the best one) and Hotel California is an overview of that whole late 60's/early 70's Southern California music scene. And none of those musicians (not The Band, Eagles, CSNY, any of 'em), incidentally, actually hailed from California

Got it in one, Tom!

 

Marc Maron just did a really nice interview with Robbie Robertson on his podcast.

 

Well, I don't hold NL/SC in anything close to the high esteem you do. It's an OK album. Its high points -- "Acadian Driftwood" and "It Makes No Difference" -- are higher than the high points on any other Band album after Stage Fright, and "Ophelia" is a nice number, distinguished mostly for Hudson's horn and keyboard parts. I'm not sure the rest of the album is any better than the material on Islands, though. And some of it, like "Forbidden Fruit," I find just flat out prosaic and klunky, really bording on unlistenable. (Also, fwiw, I'm not as much of a naysayer on Moondog Matinee). NL/SC is certainly the Band's best work after 1970, but I don't think it's a great album myself.

 

They did a short acoustic tour in early 1983. It was a great evening when they played here.
The set list:
01 prolog
02 Caledonia
03 Evanjolene
04 Down South in New Orleans
05 It Makes no Difference
06 Wealthy Old Farmer
07 Long Black Veil
08 tuning break
09 Rag Mama Rag
10 Sick and Tired
11 A Letter to Tom
12 Milk Cow Boogie
13 Java Blues
14 Short Fat Fanny
15 encore break
16 Every Night and Every Day
17 Hand Jive
18 encore break
19 The World's Gone Mad
20 Let's Go Out in a Blaze of Glory

 

There are very few groups or artist that changed the direction of popular music, The Band did this. Not only did they work with Dylan as he went eltic and the the crowds booed but Americana, alt-country really wasn't a thing before the band.

You can talk about the songs and their playing all day but in the family tree of pop culture, The Band is a fork to a pretty huge branch. I don't think the Grateful Dead record Ameican Beauty or Working Mans Dead without the influence of "Big Pink".

 

Saw The Hawks as backup to Ronnie Hawkins at The Rockwood Club, owned by Ronnie, just outside Fayetteville AR when I was 18 and underage. They were the best bar band ever, IMO.

Love the recordings, the musicianship, the songs, the attitude. No other group is like The Band. Unique is not an overstatement.

 

The self -mythologizing that began with 'Last Waltz' turned me off.

 

Because they made great albums that hold up??

 

Didn't George Harrison want to join The Band? Or maybe he wanted to make music like The Band.

 

Well there was a ton of "The Band" influence on the ATMP album, right down to taking the unusual route of opening the album with a ballad (just like Big Pink did) rather than a more obvious up-tempo "potboiler" (as Martin referred to them) like for example "Wah-Wah"

 

So the closest that the USA got to producing a "Beatles" equivalent was 4/5ths Canadian? That's not very close

 

Definitely (though sloppy):

 

To me, the moment in the song begins in earnest @ 2:08:

"The Unfaithful Servant" - The Band.
Beginning at that point, Mr. Danko demonstrates vocally that he positively
owns this song.
Like another famous group (who shall go unmentioned), they had lots of time
playing "on the road"and honing their craft before they recorded their first
album. It paid off.
Thinking of another song of theirs, who else could name-drop Spike Jones
and make it sound so good?

 

Although they don't discuss it at all in The Last Waltz, I think what finally drove The Band to split was that cool summer evening in 1975
when Garth proposed an idea to do an all-synthesizer record. He brought the idea up at a rehearsal and they all said "No! You're crazy!"
A HUGE fight ensued, Garth left the session and rode his horse to Neil Young's ranch and said, "Hey Neil, I got an IDEA!!!!"
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