I want to be there when The Band starts playing

‘Oh the moon shines bright tonight along the Wabash.

From the fields there comes the breath of new-mown hay.

Through the sycamores the candle light is gleaming

On the banks of the Wabash far away.’

Paul Dresser, ‘On the Banks of the Wabash Far Away’

 

A few years ago I saw a reader poll in The Guardian. Readers were asked to vote for their favourite popular music LP, but with the proviso that the usual suspects were disqualified in advance. You weren’t allowed to vote for Sergeant Pepper, Dark Side of the Moon, Rumours, or other albums which had sold in terrifyingly large numbers. From my own point of view, the exclusion of certain albums which almost everyone had in their collection was irrelevant on two counts. In the first place, I never get round to voting in these polls or generally participating in anything. I’m like the chap in the joke who is continually praying for a win on the lottery, until the Good Lord in a fit of exasperation begs the supplicant to meet him halfway and buy a ticket. On the second count, I never owned or liked much the albums which were audio-icons of their age. Dark Side of the Moon was one I particularly hated, because it came out just before my first year at university in 1974. As a result, every party, every drop-in for a cup of tea, every coffee after the pub had closed, was accompanied by Dark Side of the Moon. I couldn’t even escape from it by going home. The guy I shared a room with in the Parkview Motel (seven pounds a week for bed, breakfast and evening meal) had his copy and played it regularly.

To get back to this poll, the rules about exclusion threw up some interesting results. My memory may be at fault, but I think three of my favourite albums featured in the top five: Hot Rats by Frank Zappa, Rain Dogs by Tom Waits, and The Band, by The Band.

This last is a uniquely valuable classic of Americana. The Band backed Bob Dylan and were highly respected among their peers, but to someone outside of the business, their exact place in the popular music world was not at all clear. The album’s best known contents are Up on Cripple Creek and The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down. These fed The Band’s image, which they played up shamelessly, as a southern US outfit, despite the fact that only Levon Helm, the drummer and singer, was actually from the south. The main impression from a first hearing of this album is that it is a document of the hardships of farming life in the former Confederate states in the years immediately after the civil war. In the Guardian article accompanying the results of the poll, it was observed that the songs  said a lot more about 1869 than about 1969, the year of the record’s release.

The album has twelve tracks, some of which were immediately accessible, such as Up on Cripple Creek, Look Out Cleveland, and Rag Mama Rag. Despite their accessibility they do not have the usual pop song themes. Most of the songs require repeated listening for appreciation, in the same way as some novels take a bit of work to ‘get into’ but become absolutely riveting by page 80. A second group of songs is comprised of rural American anthems, like Across the Great Divide and King Harvest (has Surely Come), a masterpiece of electric guitar and vocal interplay that still manages to sound rustic despite late twentieth century production values and sound quality.

Among this middle group of songs which require a little more work to appreciate is a curiosity, even for The Band, Rockin’ Chair. This is a reminiscence of an old seafarer who longs to spend his twilight years back with his old pals in Virginia, and includes exhortation to ‘Willie Boy’, a fellow sailor, to settle down too. It is nostalgic and corny, but is rendered haunting by the arrangements, musicianship and inspired mythical reference, exemplified by the line, ‘Hear the sound, Willie boy, The Flying Dutchman’s on the reef.’

 After what I always regard as the middle group are the two most demanding of the lot, which are characterised by the most tear-jerking sadness. The first of these is Whispering Pines, an expression of alienation and regret for the past which rivals Tom Waits’ Tom Traubert’s Blues for emotional engagement, and is comparable with some of Dylan’s later work for visual imagery. The second is The Unfaithful Servant, which alternately ploughs furrows of hope, despair and finally resignation.

The Guardian writer’s comment about the album’s saying more about 1869 than 1969 is a fair one, but we can expand on it. The Band’s first three albums, Music From Big Pink, The Band, and Stage Fright, all evoke an America that never existed, and an epoch that never was. The myth, however, has some real ingredients, and hovers between the Deep South and New England, with the time varying between the nineteenth century and the Old Testament. The women’s names in the songs conform to this mythical, old-time world, a bunch of Mollys, Jemimas and Bessies. More than anything else, this is a celebration of rural America. The Band’s songs alternately evoke dusty, biblical landscapes and the harvest moon tangled in the branches of the magnolia trees. This rural evocation in song is probably the most successful since the songs of Hoagy Carmichael. In particular, Up A Lazy River comes to mind. Interestingly, The Band covered Carmichael’s Georgia on My Mind,  as a tribute to President Carter, in a later album.

I discovered this LP in 1971, around the same time as I discovered girls, and found that they were by no means enthusiastic about discovering me. As a result I was drawn to the sadder songs, which as already noted required a little effort  to appreciate. To this day, when I listen to Rockin’ Chair or Whispering Pines, I am back in 122 Stenhouse Street, Cowdenbeath, aged 15 and sorry for myself, looking out of my bedroom window at the whin bushes on Kier’s Hill and longing for the company of some girl in my year at school.

But that suggests that the reason for the inexorable pull of these songs on me is simply my emotional state when I first heard it. This would be unfair to The Band. One aspect not discussed so far is the quality of musicianship on the album. The musical technique is unsurpassable. Not only are the playing, arrangement and style all flawless, there is also an astounding versatility. Numerous instruments feature on the songs, strings, brass, percussion, the lot. I can almost imagine Robbie Robertson saying, ‘Rick, we need a trombone on this number,’ and Rick Danko replying, ‘All right, I’ll just go and learn the trombone. Back in a minute.’ I know that’s not how it happened, but it is important to bear in mind the formidable musical ability of these guys. It is that ability to perform their songs with something close to perfection that gave them the freedom to buck the psychedelic trend and celebrate the world that gave birth to the blues and to rock and roll, which in turn fathered the hippy music of The Band’s contemporaries. If they had been slipshod musicians, they would never have got away with producing such unfashionable work. My sister once said that although she was not a big fan, she always had the impression that The Band really only cared about the music. There is some truth in this. While they had the same human feelings and failings as the rest of us, it is clear from Levon Helm’s autobiography that the innate love of playing and singing came first for them.

Everyone who has heard it likes Up on Cripple Creek. The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down has become a classic of American folk music and it would not surprise me to learn that like Flower of Scotland and The Fields of Athenry on this side of the Atlantic Ocean, it is generally thought to date from long before the late twentieth century when it was written. For me, however, some of the more obscure songs on the album are almost unbearably evocative. I apologise for the cliché, but I cannot hear the guitar on King Harvest without shivers running down my spine, and listening to Rockin’ Chair, I am once again Stephen Duffy, O Grade student and lovesick adolescent, in small town Scotland and longing for a wider world.

  


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