SPECIAL EDITION - The Band's antique rock 'n' roll
By Seth Rogovoy

(GREAT BARRINGTON, Mass., April 23, 2001) - From the very beginning, The Band's music was timeless, with all the qualities of priceless antiques. They combined hand-wrought craftsmanship, the best raw materials, and original creativity based on ideal forms, to make a kind of rock 'n' roll that, to paraphrase the title of one of their albums, was for the ages. Antique, yes, but never antiquated.

Amidst the dizzying swirl of psychedelia and the histrionics of acid-rock, The Band's debut recording, Music from Big Pink, arrived in unheralded fashion in 1968. The group's back-to-the-land blend of country, soul and blues was like nothing heard before. At a time of Strawberry Alarm Clocks and Moby Grapes and Vanilla Fudge, even the group's minimalist name hinted that this was music of an entirely different flavor.

This isn't to say that The Band was irrelevant. Big Pink, after all, was the name of a house painted a psychedelically-bright pink, a communal living space whose basement was witness to some of the most psychedelically weird and rootsy rock 'n' roll ever committed to tape (see The Basement Tapes by Bob Dylan and The Band). And the album itself, from the Dylan cover painting to the surreal apocalypticism of the lyrical imagery ("She's stone said the Swede/And the moon calf agreed") to Garth Hudson's Bach-meets-Carlos Castaneda intro to "Chest Fever," is certainly evocative of its time and place.

But unlike so much of the efflorescence - or was it effluvia? -- of that era, The Band's work transcended the specifics of the Sixties hippie drug culture. The Band was not a group for stoners (even if, as it turns out, they themselves made extensive use of mind-altering substances). Everything about them was different. They had not one but three lead vocalists, who didn't so much take turns on songs as they did within songs, often starting or ending each other's phrases in ongoing musical conversations. Each singer boasted a unique vocal personality: Richard Manuel cried like a white Ray Charles, Rick Danko sounded terrified, like he was singing at gunpoint, and Levon Helm sounded impossibly craggy, like the voice of Mt. Rushmore.

The Band boasted one of the greatest guitarists of all time, but in spite of Robbie Robertson's technical prowess you were hard pressed to find a single guitar solo on some of their albums. And instead of two guitarists, pretty much the standard then as it is now, the group featured two keyboardists who played anything but the norm. Pianist Richard Manuel brought a rollicking, barrelhouse feel to the ivories redolent of a forgotten upright parked in the corner of a juke-joint, and organist Garth Hudson elicited ethereal, unearthly sounds from his Lowrey.

The Band's lyrical concerns ranged from spiritual transcendence to emotional trauma to personal folklore to great moments in American history - sometimes a combination of all four. The group's narratives had a surreal, cinematic streak, as if a character from an old blues song suddenly found himself on the set of a Bunuel film among castoffs from the latest Fellini. In spite of the fact that The Band indirectly spawned entire genres, including Americana, No Depression and alt-country, and hugely influenced groups as diverse as R.E.M., Wilco and Little Feat, The Band's unique formula has never been replicated, matched or equaled, in terms of its soulfulness, scope or impact.

With previously-unreleased bonus tracks, alternate takes, rare photos and revealingly detailed liner notes by Rob Bowman, the re-release of The Band 's eight original recordings on Capitol Records - in addition to Big Pink, these include The Band, Stage Fright, Cahoots, Rock of Ages, Moondog Matinee, Northern Lights, Southern Cross, and Islands -- is an opportunity to celebrate and to revisit the legacy of this greatest of North American rock bands.

From the very first notes out of Richard Manuel's mouth on Big Pink's "Tears of Rage" to the suggestive circularity and simple verities of "Livin' in a Dream," the final cut on the group's farewell album, Islands, a listener is consistently faced with reminders of The Band's greatness. At the same time, one is also consistently surprised by little revelations, bits that jump out as if being heard for the first time. Since when did "Jawbone" morph from a pleading ballad to funky, hard-hitting uptempo r&b? Since when did The Band's version of "Mystery Train" so uncannily capture the rhythms of a railroad? And since when was The Band's lead instrumentalist so obviously its drummer? Partly, one hears The Band anew because of the excellent remastered sound of these reissues. As great as they were, The Band's recordings suffered a kind of sonic lifelessness that wasn't true to their concerts, and probably not even true to the original recording sessions. It was as if these finely-wrought pieces of furniture were purposely left unvarnished. The unbuffed finish of the old LPs had its own charm, lending them a patina of authenticity and instant timelessness, but it didn't accurately capture the bristling electricity of the group's live performances. The newly-remastered recordings don't tamper with the original mixes, but air is let back into the rooms where The Band plays, and the songs breathe with the full elasticity that was present when they were recorded.

If the urge to sing along is any measure of the success of a performance, then my family can tell you that - much to their chagrin - no music makes me want to join in more than The Band's. It's something about the everyman quality of their voices, the close harmonies, the way they so casually bounce off each other, that invites a listener to chime in, whether in unison or harmony, whether as an echo of Helm's craggy drawl, Danko's yearning plaint, or Manuel's bluesy moan. The outtakes, alternate takes and bonus tracks appended to each album are wonderful to have, but one wishes they could all have been handled as they were on Rock of Ages, where the original program is on one CD and the additional material is on a second, separate CD. Otherwise, all the other CDs just tack on the previously unreleased tracks to the end of the program.

Careful listeners will note where the original program ended and what material has been added, but one frets that younger listeners hearing these albums for the first time might not experience them in the historically correct way they were originally meant to be heard.

These eight CDs aren't the final word on The Band. The Last Waltz was originally issued on Warner Brothers and has yet to get the full reissue treatment - beware the sub-standard repackagings that are currently available. Subsequent albums by the re-formed group from the 1980s and 1990s, including Jericho and High on the Hog, represent an entirely different chapter in the group's history, one that did not include guitarist/songwriter Robbie Robertson and one that never lived up to the group's heyday. These can be avoided by all but completists.

For fans and collectors, however, there are a few other places to seek out the best of The Band. For one, there is the group's work with Bob Dylan, including the aforementioned Basement Tapes, which cry out for a proper, official remastering and re-release. The Band also provided appropriately loose and funky instrumental backup on Dylan's highly underrated studio album, Planet Waves. The torrid, double live album from 1974, Before the Flood, features The Band backing Dylan on a selection of his greatest hits as well as on several numbers of their own. These performances in particular rank with The Band's greatest, and one hopes that some day a full program of The Band's set from that tour will be released.

Also not to be overlooked is Live 1966: The 'Royal Albert Hall' Concert, volume four of Columbia Records's "Bootleg Series" of Dylan releases. While technically speaking side two of this two-disk set doesn't feature The Band but the group's previous incarnation, The Hawks (with Mickey Jones on drums instead of Levon Helm), it is an essential chapter in the story of how The Hawks became The Band through their association with Dylan. Besides which, it's simply one of the greatest rock 'n' roll records of all time. There is great poignancy, of course, in listening to The Band's albums more than a quarter-century after the group initially called it quits. The pleasure that one gets from hearing Richard Manuel's heartrending vocals on "The Shape I'm In" or Rick Danko's on "Unfaithful Servant" are all the more heartrending with the knowledge that the pain and bitterness of which they were singing was derived in large part from lives full of pain and torment, lives that in both cases ended prematurely. As if the point needed to be driven home, the liner notes of each album are dedicated to the memories of Manuel and Danko.

Plus, the knowledge that all wasn't cordial fraternity among the five members of The Band -- several of whom had literally grown up together, having played since their teen years in Ronnie Hawkins's band The Hawks -- adds an element of pathos to the listening experience which at times becomes almost impossible to bear.

Fortunately, however, in his liner notes Bowman steers clear of recycling the vicious backbiting and innuendo that has marred some of the published histories of the group and some of the post-Last Waltz interviews with Levon Helm in particular, as well as in his autobiography co-authored by Stephen Davis. Bowman is more interested in shedding light on the specific circumstances surrounding the creation of these landmark, spiced with his own astute observations about what made them so singular and what makes them stand up to such close scrutiny all these years later.

In the end, what makes antiques valuable are that they just don't make them like they used to. After listening to these eight albums for a few weeks, you'll feel the same way about rock 'n' roll. But at least you'll be able to enjoy the fruits of when they did.

[This column originally appeared in the Berkshire Eagle's "Antiques and Collectibles" issue of Berkshires Month Magazine on April 26, 2001. Copyright Seth Rogovoy 2001. All rights reserved.]