This Review Should Be Played Loud

This Review Should Be Played Loud

9 p.m. Thursday, Nov, 26, 1976: the Band took the stage at San Francisco’s Winterland theater, opening the package with a gravelly, no-notes-wasted “Up On Cripple Creek.” Around 1:45 a.m., Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Bobbie Charles, Van Morrision, Neil Young, Ringo Starr and Ron Wood perform a soaring rendition of “I Shall Be Released” Paul Butterfield channels Sonny Boy Williamson in a couple of nobody-wants-it-to-end jams.

The Band close it with another stunning Levon Helm, his vocal cords five hours later still sounding hot as corded firewood through a barrelhouse song all about mixed emotions that don’t cancel each other out, but kick each other like mules. The song doesn’t want things to end either. At 2 a.m., though, the doors close.


Which brings up the whole question: who was The Band and how did they single-handedly muster performers of this caliber? They began in the 1950s with a guy named Ronnie “The Hawk” Hawkins, a performer of barnstorming power and indomitable vocal strength. Amazing but true fact for those now listening to “Who Do You Love”: yep, he’d been singing like that night and day for 20 years and damn if he don’t sound better than ever. Hawkins was the guy who fused what would become the Band together. A few years later and on their own, Bob Dylan enlisted the Band (at the time still calling themselves The Hawks) for more full-tilt barnstorming on his controversial, confrontational 1966 tour.

Recouping losses, recovering, healing all of them (Levon left the Hawks, not being accustomed to being booed to work on an oil rig, Dylan’s much ballyhooed motorcycle accident, Danko’s car wreck) in a house in West Saugerties, N.Y., a collaboration which produced the legendary bootlegs (the first ever) called The Basement Tapes and also heavily influenced The Band’s own first l.p., called, appropriately, Music From Big Pink.


The idea of community, sharing, and most of all responsibility binds all of the Band’s own tunes. On The Last Waltz, the Band spend the lion’s share of the show being one of the two greatest backing bands of all time (the slots shift in my mind between Booker T and the MGs and The Band). Twenty years into their existence, and the number of aural contexts they drew on for this show remains non pareil, from the relaxed Cajun slow burn of “Down South In New Orleans” (if you’re not singing along with the chorus when this tune plays, sorry, but music just aint in your soul near as I can figure).

I have to mention here that these songs aren’t just fusty old history lessons thanks to the Band’s complete and total engagement in bringing out innovative textures. The Band pull something of a coup following Down South with Dylan’s far more dense and enigmatic “This Wheel’s On Fire” , taking the original arrangement (which they helped birth in The Basement) and punching it up with horns, Helm’s railroad-relentless drumming, and a this-guy-deserves-the-same-respect-as-Clapton solo by Robbie Robertson.


The concert tried to pull together every thread of American music of the past 50 years. Even though it was nominally intended to be the Band’s last show, they refused to use the event as a showcase of their own work. Instead they brought us:

The Blues
Muddy Waters, with the Band and Paul Butterfield resuscitating, charging, and kicking the pants out of chestnuts like Caldonia. “Mannish Boy” remains a touch fusty. The song always had a big elephantine plod much like its self-deceived narrator who thinks he’s a luv man. The clearer sound will perhaps punch up the song’s stinging irony, the pathetic machismo of the song’s lead character (guys, before you start singing along to that part about “lovin’ you in five minutes time”, check and make sure your ladies aren’t in the room. You might find them agreeing with you in ways you never thought.)

Eric Clapton: For all you 12 year olds who may be hearing “Further On Up The Road” for the first time, your Dad keeps his cash in the bottom drawer of the desk, and the guitar shop offers a wide range of guitars, picks, and amps. Don’t ask permission because you’ll only get that lecture on how you’re going to be a dentist and that’s that.

Southern Folk (for lack of a better term)

The Band’s own tunes represent here, particularly The Weight and that majestic dirge The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down. Helm’s phrasing tips The Weight toward that end of the musical history scale – it’s just in that way he says “yep” – so Southern uncle after hearing another’s tale of blues and woe while polishing off fried steak and baked beans that singular word in that context. “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down” will still shock those of you familiar only with Joan Baez’s more plaintive rendition of a tale of grief and bewilderment in the wake of Sherman’s sacking of Atlanta during the Civil War (“you can take what you need and leave the rest, but they should never have taken the very best”), a lyric which sums up the Band’s whole philosophy of individual need vs. community and responsibility.

Southern waltzes – true genuine ballroom waltzes represent twice in the theme song The Last Waltz and the refrain which bookend the 4 CDs. Hardly ear candy or simply cursory inclusions, both mini-concertos ring with the deceptive melodic simplicity of Mozart and the greatest of Brahms. No snooty critic would ever develop the vocabulary to describe the je na sa quois (translation: eternities of hellish wine and cheese party with hosts’ noses slightly upturned appeal) of those two fine composers if they didn’t have a knack for well developed arrangement and sweet simple melody.

‘70s Singer/Songwriters
Neil Young finds terrific empathy in a Band that can pull a Crazy Horse out of their hats, but resort to wistful organ atmospherics to conjure “yellow moon on the rise/big birds flying across the sky/throwing shadows on our lives” on the gorgeous “Helpless.” The previously unreleased “Shadows And Light” finds Robertson’s remarkably toned guitar (full and watery) backing Joni Mitchell in her typically inscrutable lyric mode. Chalk it up to another of Mitchell’s thankful reminders that songs are 9/10s singing and playing and 1/10 lyrics. Neil Diamond also finds himself, somewhat improbably sharing a stage with Dr. John and Paul Butterfield (well not at the same time, but still…). The Band lend “Dry Your Eyes” to another majestic dirge that transforms the past – even a past one could never have possibly lived through – into a common and community memory (“if you can’t recall the singer, can you remember the song?”)

Van Morrison, Bob Dylan
Who get their own category because damn if I can define them. “Tura Lura Lural” is one of those songs I know I physically heard for a first time at some definite point in the past, and at that moment it became a song I was born knowing. As far as I’m concerned, the song’s always been something I’ve breathed and moved to even when I wasn’t hearing it. This rendition finds Van The Man in soul-man mode channeling Sam and Dave, Sam Cooke and Otis Redding, serving them pints of lager just to honey their voices down to ballad mode. He could only have topped this with “Caravan”, which must have found the moody Morrison in I’ll-have-what-he’s-having mode. Arguably the evening’s finest moment (Van high kicked and punched his way through the finale) alongside Clapton and Robertson trading solos on “Further On Up The Road.”

As heard on the previous Last Waltz, Robertson’s typically razory solos and fills rasp and slash on equal with Dylan’s gravelly voice on “Baby Let Me Follow You Down.” The detailed sound on this boxed set will withstand cranking to 11 or 111. Something of Morrison’s soul touches had, just had to immediately influence Dylan’s gut-wrenching rendition of “Hazel.” The previously unreleased version heard here will be forever open to us all, one of Dylan’s finest hours on vocals period, every inch the equal of Blood On The Tracks


Country:
Very nearly decided to include Last Waltzes in this category. They are inflected indelibly with Appalachia. But it was a tie and I happened to write about the other category first.

Besides Emmylou Harris can stand on her own. Unfortunately not part of the live show, she was one of a handful of artists who, due to other commitments, could not sing Nov. 25th, but met the Band and filmmaker Martin Scorsese the week before the final show to perform and film. We fans of Emmylou who were found via her contributions to Gram Parsons and “O Brother Where Art Thou” already know we will follow her voice anywhere. Throughout her long and illustrious career she has taken care to lead us through some of the best songs written in the past 35 years. “Evangeline,” a slow Appalachian tragic tale of a gambler who promises to bring his woman home a big pay day from that gamblin’ boat the Mississippi Queen, a waltz stands up as another of the many songs on this CD as one of those songs I was born knowing and has been a much part of the atmosphere as any rain forest.

And there it is. I feel like I’ve not just told you what songs are great, or how they sound, or how the whole package is indelibly expanded by jam sessions, unreleased tracks, unheard and now indelible touches on previously released songs, but I’ve led you through music that means as much to my heart and soul as the touch of a hand, a slow magnolia moment. This music sounds from moment 1 to close like heaven to me. It has history and glorious intent, and marvelous songs and moments and all that which must seem like yada yada to those who just don’t get that same feeling from this, or who’ve never had that feeling. To find it is my prayer for you. If you have, dear brother, sister, mother, father, let us hug and clasp hands.