You Either Die a Hero or You Live Long Enough to See Yourself Become the Villain: Robbie Robertson and the Band

This guy.

So thanks to the footage—and the subject matter—this looks like it'll be utterly riveting...in parts. And because of the damn guy being interviewed, the titular character, the villain of the piece, it's going to be equally insufferable in parts. I mean, I nearly punched my computer screen twice just watching the trailer. Every word that comes out of his mouth feels like it's been written and rewritten and rehearsed a dozen times before the cameras even started rolling. (And thanks to The Last Waltz, we know that's far from unlikely.)

As anyone who's perused Reason to Believe even a bit probably realizes, both Bruce Springsteen and Eric Clapton are in my list of Top 10 Favorite Artists ever, and Van Morrison's way the hell up there, and his recent dumb comments notwithstanding, I'm a huge Martin Scorsese fan. But it's highly telling that the ones interviewed for this here documentary—or at least who are most prominently called out in the various pieces about the film and in the trailer—are all...solo artist types. They've either never really been in a band or it's been a long damn time since they were and when they were it was for brief periods before imploding.

(Although Springsteen is right on the money when he says:

"There is no band that emphasizes becoming greater than the sum of their parts than The Band."

and nothing makes that more crystal clear than Robertson's perfectly fine but lightyears from legendary solo career—a solo career that's now 43 years long, well over four times as long as the Band's career.)

"Something got broken and it was like glass—it was hard to put back together again." Yeah, d-bag: and you were the one who broke it. You broke The Band. One of the greatest bands ever, and you destroyed it. You knew—or maybe you didn't really know yet—how amazing the chemistry was between these five incredible musicians, and yet you decided you had to be the leader, and virtually the sole songwriter, despite how vital the songwriting contributions of the others (especially the fragile as crystal Richard Manuel) was.

Don't get me wrong, I have no doubt working with those guys was hella difficult, especially once the drugs and drink really started to take hold. But come on, man. Enough with the revisionism. "We thought, let's come together one last time: The Last Waltz." No, homeboy. The others were very clear about it over the years: You decided. They wanted to keep going. Hey, if you want to quit a band, you get to. But don't lie about how and why it happened.

I mean, even the damn title: Robbie Robertson and the Band. They keep talking about how magical it was when these guys got together, and yet the guy who broke them up still needs to have his damn name in the title, even though it runs counter to the precise thesis of the damn film.

Feh.

You know what would be great? Not just for this documentary—although hell yeah it would've—but in general? Interview guys from bands that were or have been together for a really long time about how goddamn hard it is to keep bands together. Interview the guys from, say, U2 and REM and Pearl Jam and Rush and ZZ Top about what it's really like to be in a band with the same guys for decades. 'cuz there's a reason so few bands stay together for that long.

Footage looks amazing, of course. Can't wait to see it.

(For a much more accurate view of what The Band was really like, check out this video of a 1970 concert. There's little indication of Robertson's future narcissism, and absolutely no indication that he or anyone thinks of him as the band's leader; just the opposite, in fact–if you didn't know better, you'd probably think it was Rick Danko, who sings or co-sings all four songs [including a little ditty he wrote with some jamoke named Bob Dylan] and whose ability to sing beautifully and with such a unique timbre while playing completely independent, deep, finger-busting funky grooves remains astonishing. Or listen to Levon Helm singing "The Weight" for what must already be the thousandth time. This has to be at least the 10th live version I've heard him do, and I don't think I've ever heard him sing those so well known lines the same way twice. What a monster musician. Like all the rest of The Band.)

The Weight

In a business which has never suffered a shortage of jackasses, there are few more notable than Robbie Robertson, even when accounting for his tremendous (if tremendously overstated) talented.

But this is pretty damn awesome. The transition from the Kingdom of Bahrain to Nepal is spine-tingling. And getting Ringo was a bit of musical genius.

Acadian Driftwood

It's not easy to find three singers in the same band that can stack up against The Band's powerhouse lineup. The Roches do it without even breaking a sweat. It's too easy, too pat to think it's because they're family. And yet...

We had kin livin',
South of the border
They're a little older,
And they been around
They wrote in a letter
Life is a whole lot better
So pull up your stakes, children,
And come on down

Don't Do It

Look at these jamokes. If you were drinking in your local dive, or maybe a guest at the wedding of a distant acquaintance, and these guys got up to play, what would you think? I mean, really. Just look at them.

Levon looks like the really good mechanic you're pleased to have finally found, even though you can't help but feel—accurately—that he's always looking down at you because you don't know as much about cars as he does. Rick looks like the guy who works the counter at the autoparts store. Richard looks like the guy who stocks the shelves at the autoparts store: there's something about his smile that freaks out the customers too much, even the most manly ones, so they don't let him work the register. Robbie looks like the guy who mixes paint at the hardware store and tries to chat up the housewives, most of whom see right through him, and don't so much enjoy the attention as feel a bit creeped out and like they need a shower. And then there's Garth—in the end, there's always Garth. He's the guy who works in the stacks at the local university library, the one you hope the librarian won't have to go to for help when you ask your question, even though they always do, 'cuz he always knows, and there's no reason you hope they won't, as he's never said or done anything weird to you or anyone you know: in fact, he never does anything weird, other than never doing anything but studying old, arcane tomes and feeding his fish. It's just that he always stares at your shoes as he mumbles the answer to even the most esoteric of queries.

And then they start playing.

Would you get it right away? Would Levon's jittery yet slinky beat immediately clue you in that you're in the presence of a master, of a man who got as much funk, as much soul in his DNA as guanine? I'm not sure you would. What about when Rick starts in with that bassline? I like to think so, but I'm still not sure; the goofy way he bops might distract you. Sure, you'd think, okay, this might not be totally embarrassing, but I don't think you'd quite realize yet what you're in for.

It's Richard's piano that prepares you. His chording is simple, sweet, tasteful...but quiet as it is, it's got that tang of the roadhouse about it—but a roadhouse down New Orleans way—that subtly shifts your thoughts and expectations and even though you haven't fully grokked it yet, you're already starting to think, well...huh. This might just

And then Robbie starts playing. And the slightly sad lounge lizard reveals himself to be the greatest guitarist you've ever actually seen in person, with just a few chords. They're not difficult chords; this isn't Jim Hall playing some bizarre inversed voicing. They're just your standard rock and roll chords...but they're rock and roll chords played with that distorted Strat tone that bypasses your aural canal and goes directly into your very being and makes it clear that the guy making those sounds knows rock and roll and he knows the guitar and suddenly the smugness seems entirely justified.

And then they start singing. And it hits you, first, that this sweaty funk workout is somehow Marvin Gaye's boppy classic. And, secondly, you realize, accurately, that if this isn't the best group vocals you've ever heard, well, you never heard better. Never. Not by the Beach Boys, not by the Beatles, not even by the Everlys. Never.

Robbie's guitar solo only confirms what you could tell by his opening chords, which is that this superior bastard is indeed superior—he's got the technical ability, but he's more than just flash: he's got the spirit. And behind him, supporting them all, is that intense research librarian who, it turns out, plays the church organ like Bach, if Bach had been raised as a tobacco farmer in Kentucky.

Turns out, and who knew? that looks can be deceptive. And that the rock, the funk, the soul, can take root in the most unlikely of places, whether a guy who looks like a smarmy bastard or a creepy stockboy. And that the proof is always in the sound. And god-a-mighty, what a sound.

Evangeline

So whenever The Last Waltz comes on, no matter what else I'm watching, I need to stay tuned in for at least a few minutes.

And for all its greatness, I think my favorite part comes at the very very end. Just because. 

No matter how many times I see it it still kills me. God these guys were good. And just to break it up they decide, let's see, howzabout we go with THIS lineup:

Bass player - plays the fiddle
Organist - plays the accordian (and could have played a tomato juice can brilliantly if asked to)
Drummer - plays mandolin
Pianist - plays drums
Self-centered lead guitarist - plays the guitar without making much of a fuss!
Legendary female singer - well, sings perfectly legendarily with them

I give you The Band. And Emmylou Harris. And "Evangeline."

The Weight

When it comes to shows I passed on, one of my great regrets is not going to see The Band when they reunited sans Robbie Robertson. At the time I'd bought into the critical consensus as Robertson being the band's Svengali. Oh foolish foolish youth.

I also passed on Ringo Starr & His All-Starr Bands which, again, in retrospect, seems so incredibly stupid. I mean, look at this line-up:

Ringo Starr
Joe Walsh
Nils Lofgren
Dr. John
Billy Preston
Rick Danko
Levon Helm
Clarence Clemons

Oh and while we're at it, let's toss in some dude named Garth Hudson now and then. Why not, right? What can it hurt?

Who in the hell in their right mind would pass up a band like that? I mean, who passes up a chance to see Levon Helm and Rick Danko together, in almost any venue or configuration? (Garth only joined them for a few shows on this tour.) An idiot, that's who.

Stage Fright

There are many things in rock history nearly impossible to believe. That John Lennon was not clearly the dominant musical force in the Beatles, for instance—nor was Paul McCartney. That there are people who still don't understand how staggeringly talented Elvis Presley was. That Buddy Holly was only 22 damn years old when he died. 22! The mind boggles.

But I'm not sure anything surpasses the fact that Rick Danko was only the third-best vocalist in the Band.

This guy. This guy. Wasn't even second-best. He was third.

Just does not seem possible. And yet.

(Also, yes, The Last Waltz was beautifully shot, but never more so than this song. Even for Scorsese, this is just gorgeous.)

Look, George Harrison was a fine singer...but he was very clearly not one of the two best in his group. Same with John Entwhistle and Mike Mills.

But Rick Danko? All but a small handful of top-+notch bands ever would have been pleased as punch to have him as their lead singer, and he could easily have made a very good band a top-notch one. Yet so loaded with talent was the Band that he was relegated to last place as a vocalist. (We'll ignore Robbie Robertson's blessedly rare forays into singing back then.)

The magical thing about the Band, of course, was that as musicians, they were all—including the otherwise rapacious Robertson—incredibly generous, able to step to the front and happy to fade into the back. The result, when everything aligned just so, was perfection. And never more so than on this, one of the great examples of a great band not only firing on all cylinders, but gracefully and graciously passing the ball back and forth.

Then some returned to the motherland The high command had them cast away And some stayed on to finish what they started They never parted, they're just built that way

I sometimes wonder if Robertson knew he was writing so autobiographically there.

Levon Helm: The Heartbeat of The Band

Some time in the very early 80s, my brother brought home Bob Dylan's first greatest hits collection. I'd seen the psychedelic poster before, hanging up on the wall of a farm house in upstate New York we rented for a week once. (Perhaps the least exciting vacation ever.) I'm pretty sure when I first played the record I skipped all the way to the last track on the first side: "Like a Rolling Stone." I knew his voice was going to be weird, and it was. I knew the song was important, and sure, I could hear why that was. But what I didn't expect was for the song to be as great as it was. 

I mean, by that point, I'd been reading what I'd been told were great novels and watching what I'd been told were great movies and most of them were...well...to a kid my age, really dense and boring. So I guess I was expecting the same thing with early Dylan, and was therefore very pleasantly surprised by just how asskicking and plain enjoyable it was. Great and fun? Sign me up. 

Oddly, I think my next Dylan might have been Blood on the Tracks and, again, it was one of those relatively rare (for me) experiences of clicking with a piece of music from virtually the very first second. Usually it takes me a while to warm up to something, or at least figure out how I feel about it. But with Dylan, the connection was instantaneous.

The rest of his 60s studio albums followed, from the debut up to and including John Wesley Harding. After that, I skipped ahead to Desire and then Infidels, leaving (obviously) some big caps in my collection.

One of those gaps was Dylan live. Back in those days, he only had a few live collections out—this being well before his official Bootleg series release was even a twinkle in the record company's eye—and I had none of them. Instead, my first time hearing Bob Dylan live was The Last Waltz.

We were still years away from getting cable TV, so I spent what still seems an insane amount of money—something like twenty-five bucks, I think—and ordered the VHS tape from J&R Music. I was so excited, in no small part because of the guest stars, being already an admirer of Martin Scorsese and a huge Eric Clapton fan. And sure enough, the movie was mostly enjoyable, even if Neil Young played what was then one of my least favorite of his best known songs and I'd not yet developed an appreciation for Joni Mitchell and most of all what the hell was Neil Diamond doing on that stage and how did he manage to warp the space-time continuum so that his one song lasted four decades and counting? (I'm pretty sure it's still going, even as I type.)

But my boy EC tore up his song—even if Robbie Robertson upstaged Slowhand by leaping into the breach when Clapton's strap come off and ripping a solo which at least equaled, if not bettered, anything Eric himself played that night—Van the Man was brilliant and Muddy Waters was just about the hippest, most elegant and suave damn thing I'd ever seen. And The Band themselves were simply on fire, playing their hits so energetically they very nearly ruined their more stately studio versions for me for some time.

And then came the night's final guest, Bob Dylan, wisely and unsurprisingly kept for last. The young me was disappointed that he played "Forever Young," a song I didn't know at the time and which, if I now love it and obviously get the choice, held little relevance for the not even quite a teenager yet me.

But then the song starts to wind down. The Band gets a bit quieter and maybe a bit slower. Dylan leans in and has a brief conversation with Robbie. He looks back at Levon. And then he slams into "Baby, Let Me Follow You Down" in total rock and roll mode. And The Band follows perfectly, as though they'd rehearsed copiously, even as it's crystal clear they very much have not (the way Rick Danko turns away the moment the song starts is just so smooth and assured).

I had never heard Dylan play this sort of rock and roll before. Sure, his trio of rock and roll albums from the 60s were called rock and roll, and they were—the label "rock and roll" is a big one and an awful lot of things fit under it comfortably. But to a kid who'd ingested Led Zeppelin's entire oeuvre by that point, not to mention a heaping dose of Black Sabbath and Blue Oyster Cult and Aerosmith, those Dylan albums were wonderful...but seemed tame, sonically, by comparison. I loved them, don't get me wrong—I even loved his earliest, folk albums, including his original recording of "Baby, Let Me Follow You Down." But they weren't rock and roll, not the way I categorized it at the time, not the way Bruce Springsteen screaming "Adam Raised a Cain" and hammering away at his guitar solo was rock and roll.

Except that this performance was rock and roll. It was so rock and roll. There was no other way to describe it. And then he started singing. Only it was closer to shouting, yet melodically and in tune. They way he screamed the final line of each verse was spine-tingling. There was no way you could imagine that this guy had started as the world's premier folk-singer—he was far closer to Johnny Rotten or Joe Strummer than Peter Yarrow or Paul Stookey. 

(Not long after that, I acquired Before the Flood, the live Bob Dylan/The Band album, and it remains not only one of my favorite live albums ever, but one of my favorite releases from either Dylan or The Band. And even after The Last Waltz, I was flabbergasted by the way Dylan absolutely ripped into "Most Likely You Go Your Way." Just incendiary and bordering on abusive. Glorious.) 

Last night I turned on VH1-Classic, as I do towards the end of most nights, to see what's on and whether it's worth watching again. The 394th showing of Metal: A Headbanger's Journey was scheduled, but they'd wisely preempted it for the 23rd airing of The Last Waltz, obviously in honor of Levon Helm. I'd just happened to catch Clapton's song starting and, as usual, I watched almost the entire film from there, including Van Morrison's magnificent "Caravan" and Dylan's miniset. 

Which is when I noticed something I'd never caught before, no matter how many times I'd watched. Scorsese's close friendship with his one-time roommate Robbie Robertson is well known, and his preferential treatment of the songwriter, to the unfortunate neglect of the rest of The Band, much discussed. It's one of the film's few glaring flaws and something which has grated over the years. But maybe because Helm had just died, or maybe because he's fairly magnetic, I was watching him and Dylan, directorial decisions be damned. And what I noticed was that I wasn't the only one focusing on Levon. So was Bob Dylan. 

Check it out. As "Forever Young" winds down, Dylan and Robbie have their discussion, and then Dylan looks towards Levon to make sure he's in on the plan. And from then on until the end of "Baby, Let Me Follow You Down," Dylan keeps touching base with Levon. He looks at Robbie, he looks at Rick and Richard, he's checking with all The Band—or maybe just sharing the joy of making music—but it's Levon he looks at most. Even when he and Robbie switch positions, so Robbie's cagily between Dylan and Levon, Bob keeps looking past Robbie, behind him or over his shoulder, towards Levon. Again and again and again he looks back towards the drummer. 

This could mean that he's worried that the drummer's not on the same page. It could mean that the drummer's screwing up, or that he's afraid the drummer's about to screw up. Except that this is Levon Helm, who had music in his DNA, one hell of an instinctual drummer with an almost unsurpassed feel, a fine mandolin player, and every bit as great a singer as Robbie Robertson is a writer or guitarist. No one, no one, ever needed to worry about Levon on stage. It'd be like worrying that water wasn't going to be wet. 

So it wasn't that. It was just the opposite. It's clear that Dylan—often oddly underrated as a musician, for all he's lauded as an important and brilliant writer—knows exactly where the heart of The Band resides. Robbie may have been the intellectual guide, Richard the tormented soul, Rick the rock and Garth the most accomplished musician. But Levon was the heart of The Band. Of its three outstanding singers, he was the best. He was the one from the deep south, the one who'd been there at the birth of rock and roll, the one who'd absorbed the sounds of purest country and blues as he grew up—and as the drummer he had, as all drummers do, an outsized impact upon the sound and feel of the group. 

Dylan obviously knew all that. Which is why he glances at Robbie and Rick and Richard, but keeps looking past his closer friend Robbie, to touch base with Levon, to make sure they were on the same wavelength, to see how Levon's feeling, to see where he's going, to make sure he's following okay. 

Which he is. When the song winds up, somewhat sloppily, but not nearly as awkwardly as it might, you can see Bob once again look back towards Levon, having to bend forward to look past Robbie. Then he looks around at everyone else. And then Dylan moves, so he can look behind Robbie this time, in order to get a better view of the drummer. And as he and Levon wrap up the song, not quite together, Bob Dylan suddenly gives his one big genuine smile of the night. 

That's the effect Levon Helm and his music had on people. 

Van the Man and Yarrrrragh

Levon Helm just died. The news only broke a few hours ago, but fans were prepared by the previous day's reports of his impending death.

Robbie Robertson got all the acclaim, and not without justification—he wrote the majority of the songs and is a stunning guitarist. But Levon was the real linchpin of the band. Robbie wrote the words—massively inspired by Levon—but Levon Helm was the one who gave them life. A great drummer, a great singer, a great musician. The world is a lesser place today.


This all put me in mind of a post I wrote a few years ago about one of my favorite Band performances—a performance, ironically, not of a Band song and not sung by any of the Band's three fine singers, but by one of the very few singers who was at least their equal. 

So I was channel surfing and I stumbled across The Last Waltz. Levon Helm was giving Martin Scorsese a little history lesson, which dragged me in; Levon's interviews are far and away the best in the film.

I planned on then turning it off, but immediately afterward Van Morrison came on to perform with The Band, which meant I had no choice but to keep watching. Sure, I own the film and, yeah, I've seen this part at least a half-dozen times, but that's not nearly enough. Not for a performance this great.

I wrote about it before, and you can read it here, if you'd like. I'm going to repeat some of what I said, but watching it again a year and a half later was…well, it wasn't like seeing it for the first time, but I noticed things I'd never seen before.

Van is just incendiary. He's on fire. He is Music Personified in one fat little Irish bundle of Yarrrrragh.

He sings "Caravan," a song which is not just the best song about radio ever but one of my personal all-time favorite reasons for being alive. And on this night Van is beyond belief. And the song is, as always, magnificent, as is The Band’s playing of it.

But here's the thing: where the words are normally moving, here they mean nothing. They are simply syllables he's singing, utterly devoid of their initial or indeed any meaning at all. The syllables are nothing more than a vehicle for his voice, his voice being simply a vehicle his body is using to convey his soul. Something like a fractal, the sounds he's making contain all the beauty that is and ever had been and ever will be in the universe.

Yet the words themselves are barely comprehensible at times. Which doesn't matter. They’re wonderful lyrics but in this case they don't need to be intelligible. You don't need to understand a supernova to be overwhelmed by it.

It's fascinating to watch him watching the band. For a musician who so clearly trusts the muse, he's also aware that playing with a band is team sport. This is his song: he wrote it, he recorded it, and it's one of his signature pieces; he owns this song in every sense. Yet playing here with a different group of musicians, you can see him feeling his way. He's good friends with The Band—they were neighbors and drinking buddies up in Woodstock. But it's not his band, and there's a certain tension there, albeit a happy and productive one.

When it comes to the coda, the "turn it up!" section, Robbie Robertson starts dropping tasty little bits of guitar obbligato in. Twice Van goes to sing, pulling the microphone up to his mouth, only to pause and lower it again, waiting for the right place to dive in. There's no wrong place, per se—it's all the same set of chords over and over. But just because there's no wrong place doesn't doesn’t mean that there's not a right place.

And finally he finds it. And off he goes, tentatively the first time, feeling his way in, but pleased, knowing he's on the right track, murmuring, "yeah." The next time he's sure of his footing, and starts scatting. And he and The Band are simply locked together.

And then to the accompaniment of a musical sting he suddenly throws his arm up in the air and you can hear the crowd go wild. Again he does it and again the cheers. The camera pans and you can see The Band—or least Robbie, Levon and Rick Danko—are all laughing. Four, five times he does this, and then finally the camera pulls back far enough that you can see what he's really doing: he's kicking his leg in time to the sting. He does a little prefatory bunnyhop and then the kick.

There are many musicians with outstanding physical grace, such as Elvis Presley and Sam Cooke, Jim Morrison and Jimi Hendrix, Bruce Springsteen and David Bowie, Bono and Kurt Cobain, and this is without even going into amazing dancers such as James Brown and Michael Jackson and Prince.

Van Morrison is not one of them. He's chubby and stubby and has perfect looks for radio.

But it doesn't matter. At all. Not one bit. Because this isn't about beauty, it's about joy, music and art and life and joy, which makes even his ungainliness beautiful. Still ridiculous but impossibly beautiful and oh so perfect. Just frosting on the cake that is the universe. All of which, for four and a half minutes, are contained in the music pouring out of one pudgy little Irish troubadour.

Originally published at Left of the Dial.