In this concluding instalment of Scott Shea’s two-part article, the story of Bob Dylan and the Hawks reaches its peak. Following Dylan’s fateful decision to go electric, Shea charts the 1965–66 World Tour, the jeers that became legend, and the transformation of the Hawks into one of rock’s most influential groups. Shea shows how the bond forged under fire between Dylan and The Band gave birth to a new sound, and a new way of seeing what rock and roll could be.
God On Our Side
When a leader prepares for battle, the two most important things are having a good strategy and being surrounded by warriors he can trust and with passion that’s equal to or greater than his own. That’s what Bob Dylan did when he recruited the Hawks to be his backing band on his World Tour of 1965/66, but he didn’t come to that decision on his own. When he met Robbie Robertson during the recording sessions for “Like a Rolling Stone,” the guitarist didn’t come away thinking he’d made a deep connection. It was rather concise, perfunctory and quite unremarkable, and he probably didn’t think he’d ever hear from the popular singer again. He went back to Tony Mart’s in Somers Point, New Jersey, where the Hawks had extended their summer residency through August and September, continuing to entertain vacationing youth and preparing for their upcoming recording sessions. Around one month later, Robbie got a message from Bob Dylan’s manager, Albert Grossman, requesting that he meet with him and Bob in their Park Avenue office in Midtown Manhattan. There was no reason given, but Robbie’s curiosity was piqued.
When he got there the following Monday, he saw an old friend, Mary Martin, who was a club-going college student back in Toronto during their Hawkins days and now worked for Grossman in various capacities. Bob and Robbie moved into a conference room to talk music and pick some guitars, where they bonded on their mutual love for the blues. Knowing Robbie was a pure rock and roller, Bob started talking about playing with Bobby Vee before coming to New York. It didn’t really impress Robbie too much, but he didn’t let on. They took a ride down to Grossman’s apartment in Gramercy Park, where Bob laid it on him. He told Robbie about his recent experience with a pickup band playing electrified arrangements of his songs at the Newport Folk Festival back in July, which elicited a lot of boos from disgusted fans. Nevertheless, he was going full speed ahead and taking this act on the road. He wanted Robbie to be his lead guitarist.
It would be an unprecedented tour where there’d be no opening acts and two sets. The first set would be Bob alone, and in the second, he’d be joined by a full band, playing unadulterated, loud rock and roll versions of new and old songs. Bob already had commitments from bassist Harvey Brooks, drummer Bobby Gregg and keyboardist Al Kooper, who came up with the exhilarating organ intro to “Like a Rolling Stone,” that helped make the song a radio success. Robbie found himself in a pickle. He and his fellow Hawks had an unwritten “all for one and one for all” pact in their quest for fame and fortune, and this is something he’d be doing independently. On the other hand, he enjoyed his rapport and bond with Bob, and he could be passing on a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. When he told him about the Hawks’ upcoming commitments, Bob sought a compromise and asked him to play on his first two dates in Forest Hills, New York and the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles. Robbie said he’d do it on the condition that bandmate Levon Helm join them on drums, to which he agreed. Now all he had to do was tell Levon and break it to the rest of the guys.
It was met with a mixed reaction. While they were all a little nervous that this was the end, they couldn’t blame Robbie for seizing the opportunity, and perhaps bringing loyal Levon, their mentor, along gave them a little peace of mind. The first show in Forest Hills was set for August 28th, and, although rehearsals went as good as possible considering the circumstances, nothing could prepare them for the audience’s negative reaction. Before going on stage, Bob told them, “Don’t stop playing no matter what,” which helped keep them together. Turns out, he wasn’t kidding. The first half of the show, with Bob solo with just his acoustic guitar and harmonica, went swimmingly, but as soon as the band emerged from the shadows, plugged in their instruments, tuned up and went through the opening bars of “Tombstone Blues,” the boos and hisses came flying, especially after each number ended. For Robbie and Levon, it was unreal. Here they were playing honest-to-goodness rock and roll with one of the biggest stars on the planet, and this audience of approximately 15,000 stayed in their seats and booed. Several fans busted through the barriers, with a few making it onto the stage. Al Kooper even got knocked over, but Bob just shrugged, almost as if he was expecting it. The show at the Hollywood Bowl five days later was essentially the same thing, although the boos and overall outrage seemed a bit more muted.
When it was all said and done, everyone went their separate ways with no idea of whether Bob was going to continue with a full-blown tour, considering the results. But a little more than two weeks later, Robbie got a call from Bob, asking him and Levon to join him for an additional 15 dates, beginning September 24th at the Municipal Auditorium in Austin, Texas. As flattering as the offer was, Robbie said they couldn’t commit because of their dedication to the Hawks. But Bob wouldn’t take no for an answer and asked Robbie to meet him at the Kettle of Fish folk club in Greenwich Village later that evening. He made the two-hour drive, joining Bob and his friend and tour manager Bobby Neuwirth at a table in the back. The mood was light and jovial, which allowed Bob to ask Robbie again to join him on the tour, but the guitarist remained steadfast in his decision.
“We’ve been through so much together,” he told Bob. “And we’re going to see it through.”
Bobby Neuwirth, young, handsome and energetic, and Bob’s closest confidant, chimed in, reiterating that playing with Bob Dylan was a pretty big deal. Robbie agreed but remained committed to his band. In the pressure of the moment, he conjured up a demand that may please all parties involved and laid it on the line, telling them that the only way he could do it was if Bob hired the entire band. Neither saw that coming.
“Whoa, how do we know that these guys could even cut it?” Neuwirth asked.
“You don’t,” Robbie replied. “Bob would have to come hear us play.”
Slightly hesitant at first, Bob grew to like the idea more and more as the night wore on and agreed to come and see the Hawks during their stand at the Friar’s Tavern in Toronto the following week. In between, the Hawks journeyed to Mirasound Studios near Rockefeller Center in Midtown Manhattan, where they laid down three tracks, two of which would make up their only single for the Atlantic subsidiary, Atco. The two selected tracks were both written by Robbie specifically for the single, and both capture those five musicians in their mid-1960s R&B splendor with Richard Manuel’s passionate vocals taking center stage. “He Don’t’ Love You (And He’ll Break Your Heart),” whose title was a nod to an old Jerry Butler hit, shuffled and shimmied along nicely, showcasing the Hawks’ ability to get a crowd up and dancing. The A-side was a topical song you could also dance to. The lyrics of “The Stones That I Throw” reflect Robbie’s short time with Bob Dylan and could’ve been ripped from the day’s headlines. Robbie had the Staple Singers in mind when he wrote this Civil Rights ballad and showed his compassion for the black men and women being targeted by those in the American South still clinging to Jim Crow.
“Don’t build walls and barricades, so a man can’t find his way/And barking dogs won’t block my way from taking my brother’s hand/And something makes me want to stand up and do what’s right.”
The single, released under the name Levon & the Hawks, sank like a stone, surfacing only briefly on CHUM’s Top 25 in Toronto. It wasn’t a total surprise, but disappointing, nonetheless. In the meantime, Bob Dylan and Bobby Neuwirth made their way to the Friar’s Tavern on Wednesday, September 15th, to see the Hawks in action, and he was duly impressed. The group was tight, exhilarating and proficient. He instinctively knew he couldn’t have assembled a better group in 100 years and joined them onstage after closing time to run through several numbers. It was rough going because of the rest of the band’s unfamiliarity with the material. However, they smoothed out some of the rough edges the following night, although there were still some twinges of trepidation among the Hawks. Nevertheless, when Bob left a day later, they had agreed in principle to support him for the next 15 dates and possibly more.
Younger Than That Now
Bob Dylan’s 1964 album, “Another Side of Bob Dylan,” included a song called “My Back Pages.” It was one of the LP’s highlights and would be the final Byrds chart hit three years later. Perhaps it went over the heads of many of his faithful fans who parsed through every lyric. Still, it was his declaration of independence from the leftist folk music cognoscenti who’d been heaping praise on him of late, calling him the “voice of a generation” and the hip young messenger of their progressive policy proposals. He almost pokes fun at himself and practically apologizes for his protest blitz, which had become fodder for comedians and columnists over 30. That phase had run its course, and he was shelving it.
Bob was practically telegraphing his move to rock and roll, and if his most hardened fans weren’t reading between the lines, perhaps they should’ve been when he belted out, “I was so much older then, I’m younger than that now.” Within the pages of the liner notes of Volume 6 of Bob Dylan’s “Bootleg Series,” which featured his October 31, 1964 performance at Philharmonic Hall in Manhattan, are pictures of Bob palling around Greenwich Village with ex-Even Dozen Jug Band guitarist John Sebastian, who would soon form the folk-rock band the Lovin’ Spoonful, and Ramblin’ Jack Elliot. In one shot, the three are standing outside a record shop circa 1964, where Bob is seen thumbing through several new releases, including the Rolling Stones’ U.S. debut, “England’s Newest Hitmakers,” with a look of curious optimism. The album included blues songs by Willie Dixon, Jimmy Reed and Slim Harpo. Bob knew what the Stones and other British Invasion bands sounded like, so why couldn’t he do that too? It looked so much more fun.
Come Autumn 1965, his lyric was put into action when he went out on tour with the Hawks, and it would be one of the most surreal musical adventures in modern times. Never before had music fans paid good money for a ticket to come specifically to boo a beloved artist en masse, but that’s what happened for the most part. Bob’s switch to electric, full-band arrangements was seen as a betrayal by die-hards, and the Hawks bore the brunt of the ire. Bob got his fair share too, but underneath it all, he remained their hero whom they hoped would come back to his senses, and he did pacify them by doing a traditional solo first set. From the moment the Hawks walked on stage to plug in and get in tune until their closing rendition of “Like a Rolling Stone,” the audience let them have it.
But if it hit Bob in the heart, he didn’t let it show. His arrangements and his attire were almost antagonistic to the folk purists, as was some of his monotone banter between songs. Before launching into a full band arrangement of “I Don’t Believe You (She Acts Like We Never Have Met,” Bob would blow listlessly into his harmonica for a few seconds and say, “This is called ‘I Don’t Believe You.’ It used to go like that, but now it goes like this,” almost challenging the folkies to charge the stage, and sometimes they did. His onstage attire looked like it came from outer space and a long way from the blue jeans, work shirt and suede leather jacket he wore only two years earlier. They’d been replaced by polka dot shirts, thin suits that were often striped or checkered, Beatle boots, dark prescription sunglasses and a hairstyle that resembled a plasma bulb. In other words, he’d gone totally mod, which was another thumb to the eye of folk music.
The Hawks looked dazzling playing behind him, dressed in their designer suits and long hair for 1965. The seeming disinterest, which they’d incorporated into their stage act courtesy of the Cannonball Adderley Sextet, served them well in getting through these oftentimes ugly circuses, but also elicited a mercenary demeanor to those in the audience. Not only were these men ruining Bob Dylan’s music, but they were dressed like their fathers! It added insult to injury. The jeers, insults, rotten tomatoes and gnashing of teeth were difficult for a group who aimed for and achieved sonic perfection and had been receiving nothing but applause and approval from audiences for close to five years now. But most of the guys believed it was all a part of paying their dues. All but one, that is.
Strike Another Match, Go Start Anew
Drummer Levon Helm had been the anchor of the Hawks for years. He predated all of them and had served as a mentor to each member in one form or another. He was older than all of them, except Garth, and helped them adjust to life on the stage and on the road and improve their playing. He was at all times a friend, a big brother, a father figure, a partner in crime and a best friend, not to mention one hell of a drummer. After they broke away from Ronnie Hawkins, he became the leader and directed things on stage, and kept the Hawks running like a well-oiled machine. That’s why it came as a complete shock to Robbie in late November, during a short layover in New York City, when Levon knocked on his door late one evening at the Irving Hotel and told him that he was leaving.
“I can’t do this no more,” he told his old friend. “I don’t like it, and I gotta go.”
Despite his shenanigans, periodic insobriety and sardonic Southern wit, Levon always put the audience first, and delivering a quality product was of the utmost importance. He didn’t feel like he was doing that with Bob Dylan’s music, and it didn’t make sense to keep trying to such an unreceptive audience. It really hit him when they were booed incessantly at Massey Hall in their home base of Toronto in front of friends and family. And it wasn’t just the negative audience response. From the beginning, Levon struggled to keep time with Bob’s unique delivery, and even though he’d improved, it was still a frustrating nightly ordeal. In layman’s terms, it just stopped being fun, and he had to leave…like, immediately. Robbie did his best to change his friend’s mind.
“We’re getting so good,” he told Levon. “Sometimes I feel like these songs reach such a height that they’re going to explode in midair.”
Levon said he didn’t feel it, and he no longer wanted to play for Bob or anybody. Robbie disagreed, reminding him of Bob’s loyalty to the band in the face of friends and advisors telling him to dump them. Levon wasn’t moved, and Robbie realized he couldn’t convince him. He walked Levon to the street corner where the drummer hailed a cab to take him to Grand Central Station. Before taking off, he asked Robbie to tell the guys in the band for him. Perhaps he was too worried that seeing them together would change his mind.
“I’ll catch up with you further down the road,” were Levon’s departing words to his old friend.
With a heavy heart, Robbie walked back to his hotel room and waited until morning to tell the rest of the Hawks. When he did, stunned silence that hung in the air for what seemed like forever. Rick and Garth were insulted that he didn’t say goodbye or anything, but Richard sympathized.
“He just don’t dig the music like we do,” he told the rest of the Hawks. “I’m digging it more every day.”
The rest of the band had indeed gotten way more into Bob Dylan and his songs than Levon. Bob was an incredible leader, largely due to his seeming disinterest in the fans’ reaction, which served as a rock for his band. Despite their booing and heckling, Bob reacted with shrugs, laughter, volume and provocation. In his 1993 autobiography, “This Wheel’s on Fire,” about the booing, Levon Helm wrote, “The more Bob heard this stuff, the more he wanted to drill these songs into his audience. I mean, he was on fire. We didn’t mean to play that loud, but Bob told the sound people to turn it up full force.” Bob was willing to risk his audience for the purpose of advancing his music, and the Hawks were a big part of that. It formed a brotherhood. Backstage, Bob was with the guys, cracking self-deprecating jokes and making sarcastic comments about his audience and the media to ease the tension. For all intents and purposes, Bob Dylan became a Hawk.
There was some jealousy involved too. Bob and Robbie had gotten close since their first meeting. They often hung out, with the star bringing his new friend to parties, clubs, art galleries and many other Greenwich Village elite get-togethers. Robbie even started holding his cigarette like Bob and served as best man at his secret wedding to Sara Lownds six days before Levon split. The drummer felt iced out of his own band, and it had become too much. When Robbie told Bob about Levon’s departure, all he could do was laugh and ask what the hell Levon was going to do in Arkansas. Bobby Gregg, who’d played on most of Bob’s electric sessions, filled in through December and was replaced in January by Sandy Konikoff, a drummer from Buffalo whom the Hawks had known since their Ronnie Hawkins days. Back then, Sandy played in a Jerry Allison rock and roll style, but over the ensuing years, he’d morphed into a jazz drummer in the style of Art Blakey, complete with the requisite beret. He started out playing in a jazzy shuffle, but Bob and Robbie set him straight and got him back in a rock and roll mindset. Sandy lasted the rest of the American tour and was replaced by Johnny Rivers’ drummer, Mickey Jones, for the Australian and European legs. Nobody knew if the audiences there would respond in kind, but, in a private conversation with Richard Manuel a few weeks before he left, Levon predicted Europe would be just as bad, if not worse. Time would tell.
Too Much Of Nothing
Most of Bob Dylan’s European tour took place in the British Isles, but they did get over to France, Denmark and Sweden for a few dates. British music fans are arguably the most passionate. Their dedication runs deep, and they always sell out their favorite artists’ shows no matter the venue size. Hard-working fans will easily fork over their hard-earned pounds for their latest albums and back catalogs, and there’s a reason their LPs contained 14 tracks as compared to the United States’ 12 throughout most of the 1960s. But if an artist crossed them or didn’t meet their standard, hell hath no fury like a British music fan scorned or slighted, and Dylan going electric certainly enraged many. The “Boo Bob Dylan” movement had made its way across the Atlantic, and the British folk purists came out with greater enthusiasm to let it all hang out.
Renowned American film director Martin Scorsese’s 2005 documentary, “No Direction Home,” contained plenty of recently unearthed color live footage shot by D.A. Pennebaker in Europe for a proposed ABC Television special that never materialized. It placed viewers on stage, backstage, in the audience, and in front of the many musical halls where several disenchanted fans easily vented to the film crew.
“He’s a fake neurotic,” shouted one teenage girl.
“It’s crap! Complete rubbish! Moronic. We paid to see a flippin’ folk concert!” cried a quintet of angry Mancunian teenage boys.
Having grown up in a world after Bob Dylan had already gone electric, where the outrage and furor had died down and many of those angry folkies had eventually come over to Bob’s new way of thinking, I’ve always considered the audience the bad guys. To me, booing electric Dylan is as foreign as booing David Bowie for his Berlin trilogy or Bruce Springsteen for transforming soft, up-tempo first album numbers like “Spirit in the Night” and “Growin’ Up” into onstage power anthems. It made no sense. Bob Dylan and a quartet of musicians who’d go on to become one of the most authentic and influential bands in rock history were not only making great music onstage night after night but were also kickstarting the classic rock era and reinventing the concert experience. But it’s easy for me to criticize and, truth be told, if I were one of those in attendance, I probably would’ve been booing too.
Going to a Bob Dylan concert in 1965/66 to boo had also become de rigueur for many young people. It was like a TikTok challenge long before that became a thing. And when you analyze the footage or listen to the audio of the Manchester Free Trade Hall show, which was packaged as the Bootleg Series Volume 4 in 1998, there’s lots of booing and awkward silences, but there’s also plenty of cheering, clapping and laughter at Bob’s witty barbs and jokes. It’s an indication that not everybody was there only to show disdain, or that their hearts just weren’t completely in it. In his 2016 memoir, “Testimony,” Robbie Robertson wrote that many of the young female fans would rush the stage when they broke into “Like a Rolling Stone,” which peaked at #2 in Billboard and #1 in Cash Box in late summer/early fall. My favorite moment from the Manchester show was listening to the audience clap loudly in unison as a show of defiance as Bob and the Hawks were getting ready to launch into their electrified version of “Baby, Let Me Follow You Down.” In one fell swoop, Rick Danko’s opening bass plucks washed over them like a sonic wave as they launched into their incredible rearrangement of the old folk standard from Bob’s first album, making their attempt at disruption moot. The sheer volume of the music and the precision of their playing helped Bob and the Hawks remain in focus. It made all of them heroes to me and gives me chills just writing about it.
The most iconic moment that took place during the European tour was right at the end of that same show, where, during a moment of quiet as Bob and the Hawks were bracing for their closer, “Like a Rolling Stone,” a male voice shouted out “Judas!”, likening Bob Dylan to the notorious apostle who betrayed Jesus for 30 pieces of silver, which led to his crucifixion. The audience audibly gasped at such an indictment, ultimately agreeing with a round of applause. Bob, who was very good at blocking out the noise or simply messing with the audience, was noticeably shaken by this one. He didn’t react physically but addressed the audacious heckler directly.
“I don’t believe you,” he stated with a slight quiver into the microphone as he strummed his Fender anxiously, and then stated more forcefully, “You’re a liar!”
Then, turning to the Hawks, who were mostly huddled close behind him, he instructed them to “play fucking loud!” Bob went out of his way to shout the lyrics and stretch every syllable for as long as possible as a way of hopefully grating on the offender’s nerves. And the Hawks did indeed play loudly. When the tour wrapped up 10 days later at the Royal Albert Hall in London, they all headed back to New York for some well-earned rest and to allow the dust to settle. The tour had taken a lot out of everyone, and there was another one they had to prepare for, or so they thought. On July 29th, Bob fractured several vertebrae in his neck after crashing his Triumph motorcycle near his manager Albert Grossman’s home in Woodstock, New York. There was no record of an ambulance dispatch or a hospital visit, only newspaper reports published four days after the event occurred. In his 2004 memoir, Chronicles: Volume One,” about the accident, Bob wrote, “I had been in a motorcycle accident, and I’d been hurt, but I recovered. Truth was that I wanted to get out of the rat race.” All remaining tour dates were canceled.
Bob indeed was in a turbulent rat race. He had demands coming from every conceivable direction outside of his normal recording ones. He had a book deal, a network television special and fall tour dates ahead of him, as well as a young family to tend to. He was being pulled in all directions, and, although he didn’t let it show in public, the fame was chipping away at him. Robbie Robertson wrote about how, as the 1966 European tour progressed, Bob ate less, existed only on tea, cigarettes and speedballs, and became more forgetful and aloof with each show. Levon Helm’s warning about Europe was prophetic. The fans there were particularly nasty and unforgiving, which took a toll on Bob’s nerves. After his final performance at the Royal Albert Hall on May 27th, he collapsed in his hotel room with Robbie and Albert frantically attempting to revive him by tossing his deadweight in a bath while the Beatles waited to greet him in the next room. They would have to take a rain check. Bob and the Hawks had been through a war, and it was time to seek a little peace.
Big Pink
The three-bedroom, 2,000-square-foot home at 2188 Stoll Road in West Saugerties, New York looked like any other American suburban home, right down to its faded salmon pink siding. Believe it or not, it was a popular exterior color in 1950s and ’60s America. The Hawks had to get out of New York City. It wasn’t because of the congestion or the culture. They just couldn’t afford it. They weren’t working and existed on a small retainer from Albert Grossman at Bob’s insistence. Like so many struggling musicians, they lived in and around Greenwich Village and, for a short time, were allowed to rehearse and record overnight at Barry Feinstein’s photo studio until the photographer gave it up at the end of summer 1966. Bob Dylan had been convalescing at the home of Dr. Ed Thaler, a general practitioner, upstate in Middletown, New York, and was under his care. When he was well enough, he moved an hour north to his manager Albert Grossman’s second home in Woodstock, New York, and eventually purchased a home for himself and his young family in the nearby art colony of Byrdcliffe. It had a wide-open living room they dubbed the “Red Room,” which served as a makeshift rehearsal space. That helped Bob get back into the spirit of playing and writing new songs, which is what everybody wanted. The Hawks made so many runs up there to hang and play with Bob in the fall and early winter months that Albert and his wife, Sally, suggested they rent a place in the area. Tired of living out of the Woodstock Motel, they jumped at the idea, and Rick Danko was tasked with searching for a rental. In a short time, he found the home on Stoll Road that they dubbed “Big Pink.” Rick, Richard and Garth moved into it while Robbie and his girlfriend Dominique Bourgeois, a French-Canadian journalist he’d met when Bob played in Paris, moved to a separate home around two miles north, off the Glasco Turnpike.
Big Pink’s biggest asset was its basement. Before Barry Feinstein lost his studio, the Hawks began the process of discovering themselves in a studio setting, but the songs they recorded were mostly meandering instrumentals and sound experiments that served more to acclimate them to the process. The unlimited potential of Big Pink helped them pick up where they left off and stretch themselves further into coherent songs. Downstairs, Garth and Robbie assembled a makeshift studio that featured a small mixer, a quarter-inch tape machine, an Echorec tape delay and microphones for all the instruments and the singers. They also laid down several area rugs for echo absorption and spent a considerable amount of time moving things around to get the best sound under the circumstances. By March 1967, they had their own private rehearsal space and recording studio for a fraction of the price they’d pay in New York City.
As soon as he could, Robbie brought Bob over to see their setup, and he was suitably impressed. Contrary to the New York City studios, Big Pink offered a stress-free atmosphere where he and the Hawks could stretch out, expand and create his songs right there. Bob, who wrote songs exclusively on a typewriter, soon brought one in and got back to work, but they didn’t get to those right away. To familiarize themselves, they started with takes on Hank Williams and Johnny Cash songs, familiar folk songs like “The Bells of Rhymney” and “Bonnie Ship the Diamond” and more obscure numbers like “The Auld Triangle” and “Po’ Lazarus.” Robbie’s influence could be heard in contemporary soul and blues songs like the Impressions’ “People Get Ready,” Jerry Butler’s “I Stand Accused” and John Lee Hooker’s “Tupelo.”
When everybody got their footing, Bob’s new songs became the focal point and they worked through a new batch of future classics like “I Shall Be Released,” “Quinn the Eskimo,” “You Ain’t Going Nowhere” and “Nothing Was Delivered.” Before anyone could blink, Albert had Garth cull the best songs on a seven-inch reel so they could be pressed as demos by Bob’s music publisher for presentation to other artists. Much like they had back in 1963 with “Blowin’ in the Wind,” Peter, Paul & Mary struck first, releasing “Too Much of Nothing” as a single in October 1967, which peaked at #35. Many others followed in 1968 with artists as diverse as the Byrds, Flatt & Scruggs, Fairport Convention, Manfred Mann and others recording several of these new songs. A few of them even became big hits.
While the focus of these Basement Tapes, as they would eventually become known, has always been Bob Dylan, the Hawks began to find their new groove too, and important people began to take notice, namely Albert Grossman. The impact of playing with Ronnie Hawkins and Bob Dylan, as well as on their own, helped shape a completely original sound that featured a mixture of R&B, blues, country and folk music, and the jovial mood and creativity only intensified when drummer Levon Helm rejoined them in October right after Albert got them signed to Capitol Records. Since his abrupt departure, he’d spent time in Mexico and Florida, going through all of his money and living the life of Riley. After that ended, he worked on an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico and later played drums for an Arkansas group called the Cate Brothers. During a short stay in California with saxophonist Bobby Keyes, Levon met up with the Hawks when Bob played the Hollywood Bowl in March 1966, and he looked strung out and addicted. When he said goodbye to Robbie on that sad November 1965 night, he told him that if he ever needed to get in touch with him, just call his dad in Fayetteville, Arkansas. And when the Hawks agreed that the only missing piece was Levon, they did just that. At Big Pink, a much healthier-looking Levon happily reunited with his old band, who were no longer the kid brothers he’d left nearly two years earlier. Things were noticeably different and exciting. They’d matured into creative adult musicians. Robbie and Richard came into their own as songwriters who came up with a fresh batch of songs that swam against the river of current musical trends and could be heard in songs like Robbie’s “Caledonia Mission” and Richard’s “We Can Talk.” Rick Danko even helped Bob finish his song “This Wheel’s on Fire” and Richard did the same with “Tears of Rage.” They’d come a long way from Ronnie Hawkins.
Kingdom Come
When they entered A&R Studios in Manhattan in January 1968 with producer John Simon, they brought all of those songs along, plus two of Robbie’s originals, “Chest Fever” and one he was particularly proud of called “The Weight.” He wrote them under pressure of the looming sessions, and the latter was inspired by his Martin guitar, which was manufactured at their factory in Nazareth, Pennsylvania. The profound story song, with its now-famous opening line, “I pulled into Nazareth, was feeling about half past dead,” was written in a very short time and displayed just how far he had come as a songwriter since handing Ronnie Hawkins “Someone Like You” and “Hey Boba Lou” over seven years earlier. And it wasn’t just limited to the lyrics. The arrangement and stacked harmonies, which had never really been done by the group before, reflect how much they’d matured in that time. They finished off the record at Capitol Studios and Gold Star in Los Angeles in the Spring of 1968, which included several more original songs, a cover of Lefty Frizzell’s “Long Black Veil” and Bob Dylan’s “I Shall Be Released,” which originated in the basement of Big Pink.
When they met up with Bob Dylan before the record was released, Robbie brought along a test pressing and couldn’t wait to play it for him, especially considering it had three of his new songs on it. But it was “The Weight” that left the biggest impression on their friend and mentor.
“He hadn’t heard a note of it,” Robbie said in the 2019 documentary, “Once Were Brothers: Robbie Robertson and the Band.” “’The Weight’ comes on. He’s like, ‘Wait a minute, who wrote that?’ I said, ‘I wrote that.’ He said, ‘YOU wrote that?’ I could just see the pride in his eyes.”
Little did any of them know just how impactful this record by this relatively unknown band would be to not only the listening audience but to Bob’s contemporaries. They would soon find out, and in profound ways.
When the Hawks signed with Capitol Records, the music they recorded sounded like nothing they’d played or recorded with Ronnie Hawkins or as Levon & the Hawks. It had a genuine, almost gospel-like quality that was at all times rock and roll, rhythm and blues, country and folk, and 100% soulful. It’s as if they took every form of music that they’d been influenced by, along with their life experiences, mixed it all up in a blender, and concocted something truly original and delicious. Proud of their new sound, they figured that a new name should go with it and came up with “The Band.” It’s what they’d been called by just about everybody since joining with Bob Dylan nearly three years earlier, in both positive and negative connotations.
Their debut album, titled “Music from Big Pink,” was released on July 1, 1968, a little more than a year after the Summer of Love, and landed in a pop music scene still high from the Beatles’ “Sgt. Pepper” and the trippy imitations that followed. Psychedelia was overt and everywhere and being produced by everybody from heavyweights like the Rolling Stones and the Who down to one-hit wonders like the Strawberry Alarm Clock and the Count Five to unknowns like Giles, Giles & Fripp and the Soft Machine. It gave all facets of the pop music, from artists to record labels to radio stations and disk jockeys, a contact high, and led to the rise of freeform, album-oriented FM stations.
“Music from Big Pink” stomped over all of that with big, muddy boots and was a level up from Bob’s quiet December 1967 album, “John Wesley Harding,” which was recorded in Nashville and only featured Bob on acoustic guitar and harmonica, Kenney Buttrey on drums, Pete Drake on pedal steel and Charlie McCoy on bass. Both served as sobering wake-up calls to many musicians who started as wannabe blues musicians but got caught up in the trend of backward guitars, orchestras and Moog synthesizers. The rise of the album’s popularity was pretty organic. Capitol Records didn’t organize a big, cross-country campaign that put the Band on the road and into radio stations. They didn’t appear on American Bandstand or the Ed Sullivan Show. In fact, it was a slow boil that reached temperature around the time of Woodstock over a year later.
Two of the album’s earliest champions were Blues Project founder Al Kooper, who’d played with Robbie and Levon in Bob Dylan’s band at Forest Hill and the Hollywood Bowl back in the fall of 1965, and Cream guitarist Eric Clapton. Kooper wrote a glowing review of the album for the nearly brand-new magazine “Rolling Stone,” and Clapton broke up Cream after hearing an early test pressing of the LP. He even traveled to Woodstock to meet up with the Band and ask to join them. They sheepishly turned him down, but he went on to form Traffic and Derek & the Dominoes, which were both more Band-sounding than anything he’d done before. Clapton’s good friend, quiet Beatle George Harrison, was also so taken with “Music from Big Pink” that he too traveled to Woodstock to meet them in November 1968. A couple of years later, Irish singer-songwriter Van Morrison, also inspired by their debut album, befriended them after their move to California in 1969.
And Life Is Brief
“Music from Big Pink” would go on to lay waste to the psychedelic era and serve to influence a great number of contemporary pop luminaries and upcomers. Its wide reach can be heard in many of the tracks on the Beatles’ “White Album” and “Let It Be,” the Rolling Stones’ “Beggars Banquet” and “Let It Bleed,” Fairport Convention’s “Liege & Leaf” and more directly in Van Morrison’s “Moondance,” Elton John’s “Tumbleweed Connection” and the Grateful Dead’s “Workingman’s Dead,” to name a few. The album and the group’s direction can be credited for setting into motion the singer-songwriter movement of the early 1970s. Even Pink Floyd and the Moody Blues, whose music had dripped with psychedelic themes and meanderings for the last three years, began shedding some of that for more of a rootsy, back-to-basics ethos, thanks to the Band.
Their coming-out party took place at the Woodstock Music & Art Fair in mid-August 1969, which was named after their old hometown. Their performance took place on its final night in front of a very high and fatigued audience. Though they came away dissatisfied, it brought their music to half a million hippies and, a few months later, they were rewarded with a double-sided Top 10 single, “Up on Cripple Creek,” backed with “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down.” They’d hit the Top 40 three more times over the next four years and become a staple of FM radio, and even reunited with Bob Dylan for a world tour in 1974. This time around, there was no booing. It seems many of the old folkies had either disappeared completely or had come around to Bob’s way of thinking. He had plenty of new ones too.
Two years later, the Band called it quits with the very ceremonial “The Last Waltz.” The intimate farewell concert held at the Winterland Ballroom in San Francisco on November 26, 1976 featured friends like Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, Van Morrison, Neil Diamond, Ronnie Hawkins and several others, and was filmed by noted director Martin Scorsese. It was released in movie theaters in April 1978 and has gone on to become arguably the greatest concert film ever. It also portrayed the end of a once-great band in decline.
The trappings of rock and roll success, like women, drugs and excess, had their claws wrapped around Levon, Richard and Rick, and it became too much for the ever-sober Robbie and Garth. Levon would reform the Band in 1983 with everybody except Robbie, but they’d come nowhere near replicating their previous success, especially considering he was their chief songwriter. In fact, the relationship between Levon and Robbie, once brotherly, was fractured seemingly beyond repair as a result of the former’s drug use, which descended into bitterness and a Mike Love-Brian Wilson-type fight over songwriting credits. Three years into the reformed Band, Richard Manuel hanged himself after relapsing into drug and alcohol addiction following six years of sobriety. Rick Danko died from congestive heart failure in 1999, and Levon Helm died of head and neck cancer 13 years later, reconciling with Robbie on his deathbed. Robbie Robertson passed away from prostate cancer in August 2023, and Garth Hudson, the oldest of the five, was the final Band member to die in January 2025 from natural causes.
The demise of the Band was tragic in many ways and inevitable in others. Success is often the greatest spoiler of relationships, and the Band was no exception. But, in their small window of opportunity, they changed rock and roll for the better. With Bob Dylan, they laid the blueprint for the contemporary rock concert, and it seems like, for time immemorial, it’s been two sets and an intermission for many artists. Many, including Bruce Springsteen, Neil Diamond, Morrissey, Pink Floyd, Rush, and a few others, never featured opening acts once they became firmly established. But it’s the simple yet profound music for which they’ll always be remembered. In an era of great competitiveness and borderline ostentation, they brought it back to ground level and provided another option that many artists, big and small, chose and pointed the collective pop consciousness in an incredibly fertile direction.
