They just don’t put any old thing in the National Recording Registry, and The Band sure ain’t any old thing. A concept album, revival and renaissance all in one. An all time classic.
We had been meaning to write about this magnificent album for ages (especially as it has such a rich tradition of being on the Drift Sunday play pile; either at long breakfasts, scorched-out BBQs or winter roasted extravaganzas), but with the death a week or so back of Garth Hudson (the last serving band member), we wanted to procrastinate no longer and make our first February Sunday all about The Band’s eponymous 1969 album, The Band. With our fingers on the pulse as ever, we also can’t ignore Timothée Chalamet’s (really excellent, actually) performance as Bobby Dylan, putting the year 1965 very firmly back in all of the conversations too. So it seems pertinent to spend a little time with his electric backing band and highway-roaming cohorts.
Released just 63 days after Neil Armstrong had walked on the moon, ‘The Band’ is that humanity-defining moment’s very antipode; an album of storied Americana and brotherly connection from four Canadians (Rick Danko, Garth Hudson, Richard Manuel, Robbie Robertson) and an American (our man, Levon Helm). It is a time capsule of a narrative, mostly taped in the Hollywood Hills (at the house owned by Sammy Davis Jr. and Judy Garland amongst others), a concept record about hardship, humanity and American dreams.
After years of honing their craft, The Band were a phenomenal live act, but one of the album’s greatest facets is that it very much is not perfect; it is a little like the house band playing in the shadows as the greatest story ever told plays out on stage. There are cracked voices and a few missed beats, but the realness makes it culturally indelible and so alluring. An album of dense arrangement and sonic gratification.
After those extraordinary days where The Band were part of Bob Dylan's greatest creative swerve, the phenomenal highs of their debut ‘Music from Big Pink’ and this iconic and vivid follow up; sadly the lows would outmatch those incendiary highs. But, in perpetuity, the music on this wonderful album sounds as idiosyncratic, significant and full of life as it did fifty odd years ago when they taped it all in a huddle.
A rare feat. Happy Sundays!
Watch | Once Were Brothers: Robbie Robertson and The Band
NPR Listen | In 'Once Were Brothers,' The Band's Earliest Years Shine
