The Band.

Thread just became loltastic with this last string of posts.

PK, he said he did it to scare people.

Did The Band scare people? I feel like Garth and Richard and Rick and Levon - beards and all - would be basically cuddly teddybears if you interacted with them one-on-one.

If I have a time machine I would probably want to give Richard Manuel a hug. I would not say that of Bob Dylan.

I feel like Garth and Richard and Rick and Levon - beards and all - would be basically cuddly teddybears if you interacted with them one-on-one.

Be ready to knee their balls if they've had a few bottles of Wild Turkey.

Lol

Or: tell that to Todd Rundgren!

Ok lol Alfred.

Anyway Xp to President Keyes - in case it was unclear I mean EC growing a beard. In the Extreme Honey liner notes he says "...start to grow hair and beard. Seems to scare people, so grow it longer."

it is fair to say that EC has never let go, or at least has had trouble letting go of, his disdain for the dinosaurish 70s rock people that immediately preceded him and the other spittle flecked class of 77 guys… strongly dislikes Led Zeppelin and for that matter the kind of expensive, very processed ethic associated with Petey G.

I remember reading somewhere (maybe the Marc Eliot Eagles book lol) that The Band had one of the most notorious behind the scenes party, ur, scenes in '70s Rock--drugs, women, booze.

Forgive me if someone already posted this story from Derek Downham, but it echoes what Andrew Sandoval wrote:

The last time I saw Robbie Robertson I was at George Strombolopolis’ house when I was about to perform with Andy Kim. I believe it was just myself, Andy, George, Robbie and his publicist.

Robbie had just finished an interview with George about his new book at the time (Testimony), but once the interview technically stopped, Robbie kept talking.

Off the record he spoke of how much he tried his best to give his bandmates just due in regards to royalties. You could hear the sadness in his voice. He was in near tears talking about Rick and Levon. He said Levon resented him and many others at the time, but he genuinely tried to give him his due and his love. He heartedly loved him like a brother.

Levon’s book hurt him deeply. Robbie was pretty much in tears talking about it.

It made me respect him more than ever before…rest assured I was already a huge fan.

The usually impeccable Wayne Robins made a bad error in his writeup today.

Waiting for ILX0r TSF to weigh in.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQQf9j4DzP0

Veronica Moser, this is rather off-topic, but that time that Elvis Costello and Bruce Springsteen kicked off a cover of "London Calling" by shouting "THIS IS FOR JOE!" stays in my memory.

It seemed to me almost like, um, a declaration of a truce between the dinosaurs and their descendants.

....until you hear Dave Grohl's sodden bellow, and you wish a meteor would hit him and the earth:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=whE20y5e1pI

Elvis actually liked Springsteen, who was kind of well-liked by a lot of up-and-coming rockers around the late '70s. (He hung out with the Ramones, Patti Smith was a skeptic who eventually warmed up to him, especially after he gave her "Because the Night," and Lou Reed even put it on record - literally - that he liked Bruce.) Costello's discussed this before - while he didn't like the romanticism of Born to Run or the way Darkness on the Edge of Town was produced (blaming that on Iovine), he's really a huge fan. At various times, he's given much praise to The Wild, The Innocent..., The River, Tunnel of Love, even The Ghost of Tom Joad.

FWIW, I found this re: Levon's financial problems, which really snowballed over the years. This was from his attorney Michael Pinsky in 2007 after Levon died:

Levon and his wife, Sandy, successfully emerged from Chapter 11 bankruptcy in the second week of October of this year.
Their case is now closed, with creditors being paid in full and with interest over time.
One of the bankruptcy trustees in the Poughkeepsie court makes a practice of asking folks: “And what led up to your financial difficulty?”
In Levon’s case, the short answer to that question is several paragraphs long.

It began roughly 30 years ago with the break-up of the original Band and with “The Last Waltz”, the Martin Scorcese rock documentary chronicling the untimely end of one of the most groundbreaking and influential acts in the history of modern music.
After The Band reunited (without J.R. Robertson) came the tragic loss of lead singer, keyboardist and spiritual brother Richard Manuel in 1986.
Richard Manuel’s death devastated Levon.

Stan Szelest (who had been a member of The Hawks even before Ronnie Hawkins and Levon recruited Richard, Rick Danko, Garth Hudson and Robertson; and who also, in the 1980s, played with Levon in the Woodstock All-Stars) stepped in to play for the reunited Band in Richards’s place in 1990.
Because of Stan, also a close friend, Levon, Rick and Garth had started to move on after losing Richard.
Then in 1991, Stan Szelest died and Levon’s barn recording studio and home burned down.

In the fire, Levon and Sandy lost almost all of their possessions, along with many of Levon’s contracts and financial records.
The insurance proceeds for the rebuilding of their home and Levon’s studio were $100,000 short of what was needed.
They went into debt, and remortgaged their home.
Conflicts over finances with management and professionals for the reunited Band eventually boiled over into litigation.
Multiple lawsuits were filed against Levon, Sandy, Rick and Garth, leading to a default judgment eventually vacated as improper.
In the meantime, Levon’s royalty checks, then his primary source of income, were seized to satisfy that judgment and have never been returned.

Right after that, Helm gets cancer, which obviously causes a world of problems.

(obviously Reed wasn't up-and-coming by then, but spiritually a part of that scene)

Elvis Costello and Bruce Springsteen kicked off a cover of "London Calling" by shouting "THIS IS FOR JOE!" stays in my memory.

It seemed to me almost like, um, a declaration of a truce between the dinosaurs and their descendants.

huh? Didn't Springsteen, Strummer and Costello start their careers around the same time?

Did those midnight specials I mean midnight rambles bail Levon out towards the end?

bruce debuted 6 years before costello

Elvis Costello gave a couple of interviews early on deriding Springsteen for always “singing about the effing street” but later on he sort of changed his tune. Perhaps they bonded over shared appreciation of Van Morrison.

Springsteen debuted in 1973, when Costello was playing in pub rock bands. By the time Springsteen broke in 1975, Strummer was playing in pub rock bands too. Not sure where you get 6 years from--was there some Bruce demo in 1971?

This happens a lot with EC, usually in one of two distinct flavors. The first is pretending to dislike or at least not acknowledging something he actually did enjoy listening to like The Grateful Dead. The second is insulting a performer he didn’t think was cool enough at the time but eventually coming around, as was the case with Linda Ronstadt.

xp no you're right, i misread the date on 'greetings'

For me it is less about the timing than the arena style. I can't and won't explain it any better than that.

If you have seen any of Spectacle you will see how catholic (small c) are the tastes of Mr MacManus.

Anyway it has very little to do with Robbie and the Band, so it may be best to just leave it there.

Leaving it here:
https://www.elviscostello.info/wiki/index.php/Uncut,_November_2008

Mistyped, should only be This was from his attorney Michael Pinsky in 2007: because Levon was still alive.

The Midnight Rambles DID save him financially, but those did not begin until January 2004. (Levon was first diagnosed with cancer in 1997 and went through surgery and radiation treatment the following year, all before Danko died in 1999, and it was awhile before Levon could really speak and sing again. Basically, a long stretch of time before he could right the ship.

xp I can't find a link, but watch the Spectacle episode with Springsteen, because he brings THAT up. As reported at the time:

The most amusing segment comes when they talk about the way Springsteen’s songwriting changed between 1975’s "Born to Run" and 1978’s "Darkness on the Edge of Town," becoming ... well, darker.

"One reason it was different is there was some young English songwriter at the time who said the songs on ‘Born To Run’ were too romantic," says Springsteen. "I can’t remember his name right now, but ..."

Costello looks genuinely surprised. "Was it me?" he asks. "It wasn’t me."

"I’ve been waiting 30 years for this moment," says Springsteen, with delight. "What do you think? Of course it was."

IIRC Elvis then says something like "I had very strange ideas about romance back then."

There was a really good Rolling Stone profile on Levon in 2000, including Danko's funeral, and--Drudge sirens gif--Robbie doesn't come off well at all in his own direct quotes.

springsteen is 5 years older than costello that's hardly a generation

EC in poorly thought out off the cuff shit-talking SHOCKAH

Couple of things:
Basically it seemed like everyone in the UK was really into The Band at one point, including Costello, the aforementioned Brinsleys and probably lots of pub rockers as well, if not Barney Bubbles himself, but also people like The Fairport Convention, Eric Clapton and of course The Beatles, George at least.

I’m not sure if one exists, much less a good one, but the roots revival that happened in the wake of Dylan and the Band’s “basement tape” sessions really deserves one or at least a series of album profiles that could make up a book. In the UK alone it influenced Fairport Convention (albeit to do a British equivalent), The Beatles, Clapton, etc., and in the U.S. it would encompass acts that may not have been directly influenced by Dylan or the Band but certainly flourished within that emerging revival, like Gram Parsons or CCR.

*really deserves a book

Other thing was: despite all the obvious bad blood between Lee & the others vs Robbie, it’s a similar situation to Richard Hell and Tom Verlaine or Lou Reed and John Cale, there’s some super-duper Gorilla Glue deep bond in there, both between the personalities themselves as well as with them and the us and them fanboys who often feel compelled to take sides whilst these battles are taking place but still will feel more than a pang of grief when the enemy party finally dies. Maybe some kind of Wild Bunch stuff as well. I’ve got the style it takes.

Now trying to recall anything about what The Byrds, Mike Nesmith or Rick Nelson might have said about The Band but I’m coming up all Edwin Starr with absolutely nothing.

Maybe some people got at them as an offshoot of Dylan.

Traffic worshipped the Band, too. Maybe the Kinks as well, c. "Muswell Hillbillies." And probably the Byrds, when they shifted from folk and psych-folk to kind of a jammy Americana adjacent sound with Clarence White.

Also, everyone liked Bruce as well, fwiw. Elvis was covering him by the '90s, Joe Strummer for sure liked Bruce, and Bruce in turn cited punk generally (if not EC specifically) for the more pared down sound of "Darkness," and "London Calling" as the/a inspiration for "The River."

This thread needs the broken link video at the beginning of this other thread: John Sebastian/Ronnie Spector/McGuinn: Literally The Most Un-Cool Song & Video In Rock History

Because Richard Manuel is in it, for one thing.

I don't know about the Byrds taking cues from the Band, they had a folk background and already had some country elements, the Gene Clark/Gosdin Brothers album is from before Big Pink...I think International Submarine Band formed in 65 or 66

Beau Brummel's Bradley's Barn was 68 too, a few months after Big Pink but probably developed in parallel, I feel like the hippie country thing was kind of in the air already

Right, feel like the hippie country thing didn’t really need The Band for inspiration the way those in the UK did since they already had pretty much direct access to Buck Owens and George Jones etc.

I mean, the Beatles covered Buck Owens, but clearly the Band clicked with them/George and others in a different way a couple of years later.

Traffic worshipped the Band, too.

They did, but if I’m not mistaken, Traffic Got Their Heads Together In The Country during the time Dylan and The Band were recording the Basement Tapes, before the tapes (and the legend) circulated.

Other UK band-worshippers: Jack Bruce (“Theme For An Imaginary Western”); and Steve Marriott, who recorded “The Autumn Stone” with the Small Faces, broke up that band, and later made Town and Country with Humble Pie.

No doubt Ginger Baker was the lone Cream holdout, pronouncing Levon Helm’s playing “rubbish.”

I'm no expert on Traffic, but I think the band started to really shift around 1970. I found an article online that summed it up thus:

As the 70s opened, the sound of folk rock had been blown across the Atlantic in the gusts made by The Band’s first two albums, the Byrds’ Gram Parsons-enhanced Sweetheart Of The Rodeo, and Bob Dylan’s rustic-hued one-two of John Wesley Harding and Nashville Skyline. Just a few months before Winwood, Capaldi and Wood got their act together again the home‑grown, Sandy Denny-fronted Fairport Convention had picked up the baton on their transformative Liege & Lief album. Traffic duly took in this agelessness-seeking spirit, but as a starting point rather than the ultimate destination.

FWIW, Greil Marcus called the self-titled Traffic album from '68 "almost a British Big Pink" or something like that.

Apropos of nothing, I decided to check out Robertson's WTF ep from '17, which ran right after Trump's travel ban, and hooboy is Maron's opening monologue angry.

Marcus also said of Fairport’s What We Did On Our Holidays and Unhalfbricking, “Had the Band been British, this is what they might have sounded like.”

xp

Re: the Beatles and the Band—McCartney ad libs lyrics from the Weight in the Hey Jude performance video