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I don't think you can ask for much more than Aretha Franklin with Duane Allman and King Curtis on one hand and The Staples Singers on the other doing one of your songs. -Robbie Robertson on "The Weight" |
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Photo by ©Elliott Land
It sounds like you just devoured what you saw there.
Rick Danko by Joseph Sia |
Oh, yeah. Well, it was the sound, you know? It was the thing you were looking for and the songwriting and the toughness and the music. By this time, I was 16 years old and it was highly impressive to me and the rest of the guys as well.
Why was it important for you and the other guys in The Band to create music that was an organic evolution of the tradition that acknowledged the roots of rock 'n' roll and the people that came before you? Especially in an era in which rock 'n' roll was seemingly rejecting tradition.
Well, there was a difference between the Chicago blues musicians – like the people that I was talking about – and folks like Lightnin' Hopkins. We weren't talking about country blues. We weren't talking about Brownie McGee and Sonny Terry. That was like folk music to us. We were talking about electric blues. There was a rebellious spirit in this new blues music that was about to affect a whole generation of musicians, like Eric Clapton and the Stones and everybody over in England a couple of years later. At this time, there was nobody saying that this was the direction where things were going to go. It was just there and we were playing in that area. We would go to the Cotton Club in West Memphis and Howlin' Wolf would be playing there. This was what was around in that area that we were in down there. If you were cool, that was the kind of music you were into. It was before it became widely listened to and popular and although some of these recordings that we were listening to had been made a few years earlier, it was still an extraordinarily underground thing that was exclusive to the South.
Shortly thereafter, you met Dylan for the first time. Tell me about that first meeting.
Bob Dylan and Robbie Robertson by Robert Bolton |
The first time that I met him, we were playing in this place in Summers Point, New Jersey, near Atlantic City. I got this message from someone that worked in his office who I knew asking if I would come up and meet with Bob. I was going to New York anyway to visit with some friends, so I said yes. I went and met with him and he told me about what he was interested in doing, beyond playing folk music. Then we went off somewhere with a couple of guitars, just him and I, and played together a little bit. It was great fun and I remember thinking, "Well, that was a good day." I wasn't sure where anything was going with it but he was certainly an interesting character. I honestly didn't know a lot about his music. At first, I didn't really understand what he was looking to do but he described it really well.
How did he describe it?
He just told me about folk music, Woody Guthrie and the train that he came in to New York City on and everything. He said he had done all of that and wanted to explore other ways of expressing music and this and that. I thought it sounded interesting, but that was about it. When we started to play together, that's when I discovered that there was a whole revolution going on with what he was trying to do. We didn't look at it as that big of a deal until it was that big of a deal.
I know you've been asked a trillion and one times about the experience of backing Dylan in the fall of '65 on that first electric tour. Because of my age – I'm 29 years old – it's beyond my comprehension how abrasive that experience of Dylan going electric would have been for his audience to hear. By that point in time, Elvis was electric, the Beatles were electric, everyone was moving in that direction. Is there any way you can help me understand what a monumental change the decision for him to go electric was and your experience seeing it firsthand?
Bob Dylan & The Band |
Thing is, I didn't realize it was that monumental. None of us did. We all just thought, "So what?" I thought folk music was really nice and all but it was kind of boring, you know? I mean, that was my attitude towards it. I remember telling Bob more than once that I didn't blame him, that I'd do the same thing, too. As a musician, I'd want to make things more interesting for myself too. When I understood what the whole thing was and why people were upset because of all this, it seemed a little bit silly at the time but people were so dead serious about it. It became this thing like, "Uh oh, my God, now you have gone and done it. Now you have gone and mixed two things together that are just unacceptable." All of us in The Band didn't get it. We thought that's what this music has always been about – you mix the right things together to get something bigger, something better. When you combined those elements, that's when the sparks fly and you create fire. So, I thought it was an exciting thing and I think the rest of the guys in The Band did, too. But, it turned out to be so dramatic and there were people that thought it was too abrasive, it was too much. People were really upset and it was interesting to do something that seemed to upset nearly everyone. But with time, people were like, "Oh, no, no, no, that was actually really cool and the right thing to do." It became not only acceptable but overly acceptable.
Celebrated, even.
Yeah, exactly. Then, it turned into the revolution and the revolution was a good thing and it changed the course of music forever. I just couldn't believe that everybody was pretending like they liked it all along 'cause I was there and saw their reactions [laughs].
It's so interesting to me because it seems like no one is that emotionally attached to music today to be so offended.
Because I was there, I can compare the two things and it was just a whole different view at that time. Music was kind of like the voice of a whole generation back then. Everybody was unified to some degree in this music, not only in this country but it was a global thing that was happening. It was just a different time. Music is not supposed to have that purpose nowadays. It serves a different purpose, I guess.
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