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The songs were so disparate, from things like 'Unfaithful Servant' to 'The Shape I'm In' to 'Life is a Carnival' to 'Genetic Method/Chest Fever' to the rockabilly of 'Don't Want to Hang Up My Rock 'n Roll Shoes.' Look, any number of musicians in this day and age would kill to have written just one of those songs and have it be part of their catalogue. And they just flipped 'em out like biscuits out of an oven. -Dave Schools |
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Photo of Robertson at The Last Waltz
I'd like to understand Dylan's influence on what would be come The Band's first record, Music from Big Pink. If you listen to the Hawk's music and then you listen to The Basement Tapes, there's an obvious evolution of The Band's sound, from the very gritty blues and R&B stuff to a more lyrically focused music. Is that where Dylan's influence on The Band is felt?
The Band by Normann Seeff |
Well, it was like we were right there on our own, right there when this whole revolution was happening, and it was happening with a lot of other bands too. I think Dylan's music and his songwriting opened up a door of possibilities that you didn't have to write about the same things over and over and over again. Now you could express it in other ways. We always had a strong appreciation for the song having known some of the greatest songwriters back then, from the Brill Building and everyone that we met early on like Mort Schuman and Otis Blackwell and on and on. Ronnie Hawkins had a very strong appreciation of songs. A lot of those people out of the rockabilly world did, like Johnny Cash, Roy Orbison and Conway Twitty. There were a lot of people that were really sensitive to that. The idea that it was evolving and opening up to be expressed in a much more interesting way was a very welcome feeling at the time. There was great enthusiasm and encouragement for that growth and the expansion of the music and we couldn't help but be influenced by it.
One of the things that I've read a lot about is the influence of gospel music on you as well as the various members in The Band. When you wrote the lyrics to the "The Weight" did you envision someone akin to The Staples Singers singing on it?
The Band by Elliot Landy |
Well, maybe in the back of my mind subconsciously because I was a real appreciator of The Staple Singers when all they sang was gospel music. When they became popular after that, it was really surprising to me but so deserved because I just loved their harmonies, I loved the sound of Roebuck Staples' voice. It just so happened that after we recorded Music From Big Pink, The Staples Singers were the first group to cover the "The Weight." I was completely overwhelmed and just thought how terrific how things go around like that. It was a complete surprise to me and didn't expect it in the least. I didn't have a crystal ball or even the audacity to imagine it as a possibility, you know? Then after that, Aretha Franklin covered it with Duane Allman playing lead guitar on it and I thought, "Well, maybe that song does work after all [laughs]."
Not only Duane Allman, but King Curtis played sax on it as well. That's one of my favorite Aretha tracks because it's got both of those guys on there.
That's right.
Garth Hudson |
Is it safe to say that those two covers are among your two favorite instances of artists covering your songs?
They're definitely right up there. 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.
"The Night They Drove Dixie Down" is widely considered to be among the best songwriting of your career, and it's a great example of your ability to write from the point of view of the disenfranchised. Be it the poor, the defeated Southerner, the struggling unionizers or Native Americans, you've always had this unique ability to write from the disenfranchised perspective. I'm not sure if that's the best way to characterize it but...
Levon Helm |
You know, I think you are absolutely right about that, and I don't know if I've ever even looked at it that way. I wrote this song, "Acadian Driftwood," that's about when the French lost the war in Canada. These people no longer had a home there any more, so they went down to Louisiana. There was this whole colony there of people that had left Canada in defeat. I guess the same thing is true of the "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down" as well, and probably so with some of the Native American things. Maybe it's just the way that I always thought of "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down" was just what a profound impact that it had on me going from Canada to the Mississippi Delta and hearing all these stories in the South. I was just gathering stuff that I appreciated and thought was interesting. I didn't know I was gathering stuff for songs. I was just lapping this stuff up. I remember in the early years of being down there and hearing the expression, "Don't worry, the South's going to rise again," and it had this effect on me. It wasn't just a funny expression. There was a real truth and conviction in it and there was a sound in this person's voice that really touched me. I became such an admirer of the South and southern culture and the writers that came out of the South and the music that came out of the South and the food that came out of the South. All of these elements – the rhythm of life down there, the sound of the crickets and the thickness of the air down South – it was all just so different to me. I understood why people had an appreciation for music down there, more so than anywhere else I had ever experienced. It was like everybody was in on the joke somehow. When Elvis hit, people everywhere else went crazy but people down in the South just understood somehow. Those experiences on my first trips to the South impacted me in a way that years later, when I was sitting down to write that song, this stuff just came out. It was like all the things that I had stored in my trunk – stories and characters and stuff that I remembered from the South – came spilling out.
Is that how it often happened? Your songwriting stemmed from the fact that you were constantly on the road for so many years and absorbed all of these different characters and different stories and tales along the way?
Richard Manual |
You sit down and you're wondering what you're going to write about that somebody hasn't already written about a thousand times. So, you just reach into your trunk and see what you've got in there. Because I was so young at the time – still in my teens – things made an impression upon me. When I reached in there, that's what I pulled out.
One of your other strengths as a songwriter had been your success writing for a lot of different people and different voices. From a songwriter's perspective, how does writing for you and writing for someone else differ? Within The Band specifically, did each of the vocalists represent a specific role or voice?
A lot of times, when I was writing songs, I really enjoyed the opportunity to be able to cast the person in the role of the song that I was writing. I'd be writing a song and then I would start to think what a good song it would be for Rick to sing. As I was going along, the song sounded really true to Rick's sound and what he could express vocally. The same could be said for Richard or for Levon. The song took shape and began to have a life of its own. That's when it started to make more sense to me who would sing it.
It sounds almost cinematic in the sense that it's like a director and an actor.
I remember watching those early Ingmar Bergman movies where he would use a lot of the same people playing different roles and actually relating to some of those directors like John Ford, directors that used the same people in all of his movies, where they just figured out who could play this part and who can play that part. I did relate to that because I was kind of a movie buff back then.
It's been said that your songwriting for Stage Fright shifted from the storytelling approach found on the first couple of albums to a more personal, almost autobiographical approach. I wanted to ask you if you agreed with that and what precipitated that change?
The Band by Elliot Landy |
I didn't think about it that much at the time but when I look at it now, I can see that - to a certain degree – that's true. Back then, there was something that embarrassed me when songwriters wrote these songs about getting up in morning and having a glass of orange juice. It just annoyed me. I much more appreciated the storytelling of songwriting than somebody actually thinking that what they saw while walking down the street was all that interesting. It took me some doing before I felt comfortable with peeking behind that curtain to write about personal things. At the point when we did Stage Fright, what was happening within the band was becoming more personal. There were issues entering into things and they started to kind of overwhelm the music. Stage Fright is kind of an appropriate expression for what was going on with The Band at that time.
You guys were now the center of attention rather than being the backing band. I read somewhere that it was kind of the end of the ensemble era of The Band.
The Band by Barrie Wentzel |
Yeah and probably by this time a certain innocence that had been there that was slipping away. Things were becoming more personally complicated for the guys in the group. At some point, there were other issues. It was no longer just about the music. There are all kinds of distractions that entered into it and things were kind of ricocheting back at us. That comes with the problems of popularity sometimes. It can spoil a good party.
Was there ever a moment after Richard Manuel's passing in 1986 that you looked back with regret for not playing with all those guys again?
No, it never struck me like that. I was just simply devastated that Richard had died. I didn't think too much about regrets because I really believe that we had done what we were supposed to do. I didn't have any feelings of regret and still don't. That's why we were able to make the decision that we drove this train all the way to the end of the line and that was it. It was time to get out and walk on our own. I was just sorry that Richard walked over the side of a bluff.
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