The 25 Best Live Rock Recordings - No. 4: Rock Of Ages --OR-- The Last Waltz
No. 4 - The Band - Rock Of Ages (Capitol, 1972) --OR-- The Band - The Last Waltz (Warner Bros, 1978)
The Band.
Even its name is iconoclastic, a paradox…or, a whole passel of them.
An unlikely collection of gifted musicians hailing from two dramatically different locales, the Band began as the backup band for Ronnie Hawkins, as "Ronnie Hawkins and the Hawks." In 1965, Bob Dylan burned and salted the folk music earth with the opening chords of “Maggie’s Farm” at the Newport Folk Festival. When he needed a regular band for a world tour following his going electric, he turned to the Hawks. Later, while recovering from his June 1966 motorcycle accident, Dylan and the Hawks created the Basement Tapes (Columbia, 1975), changing everything in popular music from that point forward. Sometime in 1968, the Hawks became The Band, releasing Music From Big Pink (Capitol, 1968). Elton John and Eric Clapton never recovered from that first listening, the Band heavily informing their musical philosophies.
The Band consisted of five disparate individuals who united as if conceived in a lightning flash, actively recording and performing for a decade while helping define it by producing music so much part of the North American collective unconscious as to sound like it had been here all along. The Band was a cadre of four Canadians, guitarist Robbie Robertson, bassist Rick Danko, multi-instrumentalists Richard Manuel and Garth Hudson, and one Arkansan, drummer Levon Helm. The gravy here is that three of these members were also the most distinctive singers of the era: Danko, Manuel, and Helm. Think “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down,” “The Shape I’m In,” and “Unfaithful Servant” without Helm, Manuel, or Danko, respectively. No other group contemporary with the Band could boast an equal density of talent.
Talented band members were one charm. The other was the unique and fertile mind of Robbie Robertson, whose curious heritage and restless disposition led him to try and capture the conflicted heart at the center of the dark American Romantic myth. From the desperate cry of the laborer in “King Harvest Will Surely Come” to the secular ritual celebrated in “The Weight,” to the world-weary workers in “Get Up Jake,” Robertson always had his thumb on the pulse of nineteenth-century America as She steered into the twentieth. It was a time of great growth and wanting, hot, dusty, and close.
The group built an impressive repertoire reflecting a musical Norman Rockwell scene, sick from whiskey and tired from the work. They effectively painted American Gothic miniatures in their songs, all stories of fertile soil and dry loss, hot summers, and wet springs. It was a pastoral vision full of toil, sweat, laughter, and pain. This is music as humid and earthy as peat, the real roots music, not that anemic brand played today, purloining the same name. Greil Marcus, in his essential piece of rock criticism, Mystery Train (EP Dutton, 1975), described the group's work on Bob Dylan's Basement Tapes (Columbia, 1975) as, “...a landmark in American vernacular music, in any genre, in any time, The Band built a room and furnished it in intimacy."
The Band even made the cover of Time (January 12, 1970) with the byline "The New Sound of Country Rock." I don't know about you, gentle reader, but when I think of Country Rock, I think of Poco and the Flying Burrito Brothers, not The Band. No, The Band was purely organic and subatomic-basic American music, basic American themes. The eponymous second recording (the “Brown Album” (Capitol Records, 1969)) followed Music From Big Pink. Every music-savvy teenager and young adult had a copy in their collection, next to copies of Emerson, Lake, and Palmer (Cotillion, 1970) and Black Sabbath (Vertigo, 1970), ZZ Top’s Rio Grande Mud (London, 1972), and the Allman Brothers’ At Fillmore East (Capricorn Records, 1971). For kids growing up in my Arkansas home, Levon Helm's voice was familiar and scary, bringing the music that much closer to our skin and sensibility, as much a part of us as Atticus Finch shooting the rabid dog in the film adaptation of To Kill A Mockingbird (Brentwood Productions, 1962).
Stage Fright (Capitol, 1970), Cahoots (Capitol, 1971), and Moondog Matinee (Capitol, 1973) followed. Still, creative differences and personal problems took their toll and the band began to fragment before the releases of Northern Lights, Southern Cross (Capitol, 1975), Islands (Capitol, 1977), and the brilliant coda of the Last Waltz (Warner Bros., 1978). Despite it all, the Band managed to click perfectly live and in the week leading up to New Year's Eve 1971 at the New York Academy of Music, the Band performed with a determined, inspired, conviction, documenting what they had been trying to define all along—what great American music was.
The recording was Rock of Ages, a live recording with few peers.
Rock of Ages consolidated the Band’s extant material and addressed several American archetypes. There is the subject of hard work, with promise ("King Harvest Will Surely Come") and hard work, with avoidance ("Get up Jake"). There is toil and loss (The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down") and fear ("Stage Fright"). Celebration and good times are represented in "The W.S. Walcott Medicine Show," "Across the Great Divide," and "Life Is A Carnival." Even the Biblical is dealt with, perhaps better than any other place in popular music: "Caledonia Mission," "The Weight," and "Unfaithful Servant." But these songs, considered individually, are just a snapshot. The Band's playlist is a document, a history, and a complete mythology intelligently and sensitively rendered through music.
In popular music, the vehicles delivering the music are often as important as the music. The Band possessed three of the most original and recognizable voices in the popular music emerging in the 1970s. Richard Manuel's voice is as fragile and desperate as a dying man's prayer. Levon Helm's voice is full of that rich, Arkansas Delta grit. Rick Danko's voice pleads with resignation and reconciliation. A fourth voice can be heard in Robbie Robertson's instruments and his organic compositions, his aching guitar makes a noise that only a Fender Stratocaster can. Robertson’s solo that closes what could have been St. Peter's lament at the cross, "Unfaithful Servant"— pleadingly sung by that third great voice, Rick Danko—is a study in remorseful introspection. This constellation of musical talent and the art they produced are collectively greater than perfect, they transform into the sublime.
For the New York Academy of Music performances (December 28-31, 1971), the Band employed a full horn section with charts conceived by New Orleans legend Allen Toussaint. These horns add an important and not expected dimension. They give the music a ("Life's Just a...") carnival feel, making it more authentically and organically American. The horns increase in dramatic effectiveness as the performance closes in on the coda of the recorded recital. On "Dixie," the horns play a mournful introductory lament before the ascending arpeggio of the first verse. Helm's voice, perfectly suited with its combination of Southern elegance and rural dust, delivers Virgil Caine's story with a weary and resigned grace. "Chest Fever" is where everything gels completely. Helm, Danko, and Manuel click right into place in this most famous shared vocals piece. The horn section drives the Band into a relentless frenzy that carries over into the most perfect musical expression of the evening "I Don't Want to Hang Up My Rock and Roll Shoes." Again, Helm demonstrates why he is one of the most memorable voices in rock music.
By 1976, the Band was beginning to sag beneath the weight of personal problems and discontent. Richard Manuel had an auto accident early in the year, complicated by a boating accident causing a planned tour to be canceled. Robertson considered seriously leaving the road, turning the Band into a studio-only band, much like the Beatles became when they stopped performing live in 1966. Robertson wanted to present a summation of the Band and its contribution to American Music. He conceived a “final” concert for the group followed by a period of rest and consolidation before getting together later to continue renewing themselves. Only, that is not what happened.
In cooperation with Bill Graham and his San Francisco Winterland Ballroom (where the Band had first debuted in 1969) and Martin Scorsese, The Last Waltz was given wings. Originally, the performance was to be of the Band only. Then a celebration of invited artists associated with or having heavily influenced the group (Ronnie Hawkins and Bob Dylan) was successfully floated and the performance was held on Thanksgiving Day 1976, resulting in a documentary (The Last Waltz (United Artists, 1978)) and a live recording. The results eclipsed Rock of Ages without replacing it, providing more live material for the influential band.
The concert presented songs by the Band folded into performances by a variety of musical guests with the group backing them up. The guests included artists with whom they had worked in the past: Ronnie Hawkins and Bob Dylan. Van Morrison, a neighbor in Woodstock, co-wrote and sang on the track "4% Pantomime" for the Band’s Cahoots. Band members had supported several invitees on recent albums: in 1972 with Bobby Charles for his self-titled album; in 1973 with Ringo Starr on Ringo (Apple, 1973); in 1974 with Joni Mitchell on Court and Spark (Asylum, 1974); with Neil Young on On the Beach (Reprise, 1974) and the sessions that would lead to Homegrown (Reprise, 2020); in 1975 with Muddy Waters and Paul Butterfield on The Muddy Waters Woodstock Album (Chess Records, 1975); in 1976 with Eric Clapton on No Reason to Cry (RSO, 1976) and with Neil Diamond on Beautiful Noise (Columbia, 1976).
From among the invited artists were two definitive performances. Mac Rebennack, aka “Dr. John,” delivered a rousing treatment of his “Such A Night” (from In The Right Place (Atco, 1973)). John’s live performance brimmed with happiness and celebration and John’s New Orleans left hand. Robertson’s lead guitar fills, the Band’s vocal triumvirate singing background, and the horn section elevated this performance to a rarefied level that made sitting still an effort.
It was Van Morrison who stole the show with his duet with Richard Manuel on “Tura Lura Lura” followed by the incendiary throwdown of his “Caravan” (from Moondance (Warner Bros., 1970)). It was the singular performance in the movie, Morrison, unhinged and uncontained, kicking his way off the stage explosively. This single performance among many has only Leon Russell’s event horizon performance of “Jumpin’ Jack Flash/Young Blood” during the Concert For Bangladesh (Apple, 1971).
While the guest performers were notable, the Band played front and center for their farewell concert. Since the release of Rock Of Ages, the group contributed newer material to The Last Waltz including the Rick Danko vehicle “It Makes No Difference,” Levon Helm’s last great vocal contribution, “Ophelia,” and “Acadian Driftwood” performed with fellow Canadians Joni Mitchell and Neil Young from Northern Lights - Southern Cross. The old songs were performed and sung with a robust brio betraying none of the wear-and-tear of the previous four years since Rock of Ages. A seething “Don’t Do It” closed the show and the curtain on the Band.
The British Invasion informed the United States with prejudice of Her musical heritage, one suppressed by institutional racism, fascist religion, and the wholesale ignorance of aesthetic and cultural beauty. In this respect, the role of the Band was the extrapolation of the British Invasion into the future, providing a new soundtrack that launched a thousand similar ships. Without the Band, there would have been no Tumbleweed Connection (Uni, 1970) nor Layla And Other Assorted Love Songs (Polydor, 1970), with Elton John and Eric Clapton so invested in the Band’s dedication to the craft of songwriting rather than technical virtuosity.
During the late '60s and early '70s, the Band painted a dynamic Nineteenth Century American still life in song better than any group. It is as if they have been here all along, like an ancient part of us in an old sepia-stained photograph going up in flames.
Related Discography
Rock of Ages (Capitol, 1972)
Rock of Ages [Deluxe Edition] (Capitol, 2001)
Live At The Academy Of Music 1971 (Capitol, 2013)
The Last Waltz (Warner Bros., 1978)
The Last Waltz [40th Anniversary] (Rhino, 2016)