In The Band’s music, it is a small world: You hear bar-band rock & roll steeped in crotchety American folksongs, but you also hear authentic soul — voices joining, musicians who just plain care. It’s the best beer-commercial music of all time.
Last year, Capitol reissued The Band’s eight albums for the label. The Last Waltz, a 1978 album and film documenting their star-studded farewell concert, has just been re-released. When The Band’s debut, Music From Big Pink, emerged late in 1968, it was already clear they had invented something unique. It was a vibe record in the guise of rock music — a warm-sounding pastiche in which “feel” and songwriting were taken equally into account. At the same time, they are one of the most potent precursors of Americana, a broadly defined catch-all genre coming into prominence today. Only now does The Band’s music make sense, so let’s explore their sound. (...)
The Band were a bunch of Canadian hayseeds (save for Helm, a Southern hayseed). They drifted together in Toronto under the aegis of an obscure rockabilly performer, Ronnie Hawkins. Joining one by one, they were all in his band, the Hawks, as of 1961, but they left him in 1964. (Other names they recorded under or considered include the Canadian Squires, the Honkies and the Crackers.) Used to playing fraternity parties and dark, bloody bars, they were plucked from obscurity in the fall of 1965 when Bob Dylan chose them to back him on his electric folk-rock world tour. (Again, save for Helm: Sick of the booing that greeted his first few dates with Dylan, he quit and moved back to Arkansas for the span of the tour.) Documented on innumerable bootlegs and 1998’s Live 1966, the Hawks were electric Dylan’s wild mercury sound.
The tour’s final show was in May 1966; Dylan’s legendary motorcycle accident happened in July. To recover, he retreated to Woodstock, and The Band joined him. There they recorded collaborative demos (which later emerged as The Basement Tapes) off and on throughout 1967 at Big Pink, the group’s gathering place. After helping Dylan define rock on tour, they now explored folk music’s outer edges, drawing out new shapes and sounds, weaving in strands of ’50s and ’60s R&B.
When their debut came out in 1968, they faced a barren field. If only by virtue of others’ exhaustion, the group had beaten out the competition. The Beatles had retired from live performance in August 1966; mired in fame, the Rolling Stones were in the midst of a two-year concert hiatus; Dylan would perform in public only five times over the following six and a half years, three of those backed by or accompanying The Band.
by Alec Hanley Bemis, HHB Goodies | Read more:
Image: The Band; Big Pink uncredited
“Early, middle, or late?” I asked.
“What did McCartney sing last night?” she asked.
“Ah, ‘Golden Slumbers’ from Abbey Road, side two,” I said.
I reached for my vinyl copy. In my collection are the original 1969 release and its 2009 remixed and remastered counterpart. I went for the latter. I must say, I’ve worn out my first copy. In fact, I don’t play The Beatles on my turntable much anymore, having played them over-and-over when I was a teenager. The music, a pleasant earworm, burned itself into my brain granting me the chance to call it up in my head on demand. Abbey Road, the pen-ultimate release in the band’s discography, isn’t my favorite. I prefer Revolver. So, I was due for another listen to Abbey Road, this time under Giles Martin’s careful remix.
Image: The Band; Big Pink uncredited
***
Following Paul McCartney’s closing of the 50th Anniversary broadcast of Saturday Night Live, my wife wanted to listen to The Beatles the following day.“Early, middle, or late?” I asked.
“What did McCartney sing last night?” she asked.
“Ah, ‘Golden Slumbers’ from Abbey Road, side two,” I said.
I reached for my vinyl copy. In my collection are the original 1969 release and its 2009 remixed and remastered counterpart. I went for the latter. I must say, I’ve worn out my first copy. In fact, I don’t play The Beatles on my turntable much anymore, having played them over-and-over when I was a teenager. The music, a pleasant earworm, burned itself into my brain granting me the chance to call it up in my head on demand. Abbey Road, the pen-ultimate release in the band’s discography, isn’t my favorite. I prefer Revolver. So, I was due for another listen to Abbey Road, this time under Giles Martin’s careful remix.
As most people know, Abbey Road was the name of the EMI studios where The Beatles made their sound. It was home and when the cold January roof-top concert, at Apple's offices, ended in 1969, it looked like the band was done. By the spring, George Martin their producer, took control, calling them back into the studio to record. It was going to be a high-mark in technical achievement. EMI invested in eight-track reel-to-reel tape machines, a solid-state transistor mixing desk in stereo, the band’s first.
Yet, hearing the songs again in my living room, I noticed something new. After “Come Together” and “Something”, “Oh, Darling” hit me as a tribute to Fats Domino. It still kicks because of McCartney’s intention to sing as raw as possible. He wanted to sound desperate and he does on the line, “When you told me, you didn’t need me anymore, well, you know, I nearly broke down and cried.” His Little Richard “ooos” and the song’s cheeky oh yeah ending, sounds terrific. The band loved Little Richard, and Fats Domino so in this sense, Abbey Road is a homage to the artists who got them into music in the first place. But it’s hiding in plain sight. The arpeggiated guitar during the chorus pushes the intensity to the extreme. Beneath, the unassuming background falsetto oos and ahs. Gorgeous!
by John Corcelli, Random Access Music Notes | Read more:
Image: Iain MacMillian via
