They occupy a weird and fucked-up position in rock history, too, as an outfit that was popular but really didn't get a lot of big hits, was lionized, lauded, venerated by critics but, unlike, say, Dylan or the Stones, Who, Beatles, etc, are pretty much forgotten or ignored by subsequent generations. Then there's the unfortunate fact of their recorded output, which consists of two excellent albums, followed by a bunch of duds (each of which has a following, nonetheless), a couple live albums, then a break-up and a scattering of reunion albums liked by fans and ignored by everyone else. For a bunch so lauded, its not much of an output.
The real prob for The Band isn't their music or anything else. Its the critics and what they did to them. Hey, I love Greil Marcus' Mystery Train. But the hyperbole he spins around Robertson and company really gets far, far away from him. You'd come away thinking they were The Voice of the Generation, and that Robertson was some kind of god-like genius as both songwriter and guitar player. Neither of these is true. Robertson is/was an excellent guitar player (check out Dylan's Royal Albert Hall for proof), and undeniably wrote some excellent songs. But he wrote them all between `65 and `69 and not since. And he had help.
David Womack sums them up a lot more realistically on the King Of Pop Site:
As far as plurality goes, The Band, as led by Robbie Robertson, was thematically resourceful, but at times shallow. "Caledonia Mission," "Chest Fever," "Lonesome Suzie," "Rag, Mama, Rag," "Up On Cripple Creek," "Jemima Surrender," "Smoke Signal," "Volcano," "Ophelia," "Ring Your Bells," "It Makes No Difference," "Livin’ In a Dream" and Right as Rain," most of them done up in that wonderfully ragged and woolly Band-style, are love songs with a sepia-colored Southern flavor and nothing more (or less). On "Tears of Rage," "We Can Talk," "Long Black Veil," "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down," "Rockin’ Chair," "The Unfaithful Servant and "King Harvest (Has Surely Come)", The Band didn’t explicate themes as much as they appropriated Americana on subject matter that included whores and truckers, failed crops, the Civil War, unfaithful servants, the Great Depression, Biblical apocalypse, and the Worker's Union. Everything that Robertson would be accused of doing wrong on later band albums and in his solo work, was present on these early release: obfuscation ("Kingdom Come," "Caldonia Mission," "The Weight," "In a Station," "Lookout Cleveland," "Jawbone,"); sloppy narrative ("Caledonia Mission," "The Weight," "Across the Great Divide," When You Awake), questionable moralizing ("Kingdom Come," "When You Awake"), underwritten song structures (Robertson didn’t care much for bridges or elaboration; he usually followed a verse/chorus/verse/chorus/verse/chorus pattern – a pattern that would soon stifle The Band: though this approach would include eight songs on The Band – which is an obvious exception).
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There's no doubt - in their time, The Band were different. In an era when rock music was the rejection of prior generations and all of their values, they wore their hair short(er) (they were still pretty beatnik-looking), and posed in front of their Woodstock house surrounded by their square-looking parents, as well as various aunts-uncles-cousins-siblings. Their music suggested tradition and looked to the past for inspiration. The songs were short and clean and free of lysergic influences. As Ed Ward put it perfectly:
...without quoting or making direct reference, verbal or musical, to country music, 19th century parlor and military music, or any of the patriotic poets like Whitman, Sandburg, or Lowell, it seemed to evoke all these things and more, entirely on its own terms.
Exactly. And coming off Sgt. Pepper, The Doors, Piper At The Gates Of Dawn, Their Satanic Majesties Request, Are You Experienced, and The Velvet Underground and Nico, it must have felt like a breath of fresh air. Like a simple morning breakfast after a night of partying.
And they were influential. Someone like Neil Young, Eric Clapton's Derek and the Dominoes days (his best music) and many more would be unthinkable without them. Their stamp is all over "Americana" and "No Depression" type artists, and, at their best, they did it better than any of them.
But they also shot their wad after two albums. This isn't a crime. Hey, the New York Dolls only made two albums (not counting their recent reunion). But then, no one ever put the Dolls on a pedestal as monumental American artistes.
And, y'know, in the end they were another 60's/70's-era rock band. I used to encounter a loon named Tim Herrick over on usenet who would rave on and on about Levon Helm's (very entertaining) bio, because it shattered his illusions. Yep, in the end The Band were smoking pot and fucking groupies and shoveling cocaine up their noses just as much as any of their contemporaries. Their image was as manufactured as Alice Cooper's. It was just more wholesome.
The proof's in the pudding. Robertson rarely raises his head as a solo artist, and he's never written a single song since 1969 as good as anything one those first two albums. Like I said - he had help.
But I can't ignore the fact - when I listen to Big Pink or The Band, or the comp I made of early singles and outtakes (much of which went on The Basement Tapes) and a couple bits and pieces from the later days, it's still intoxicatingly fine music.
The Band
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Essential Listening
The first two count. Music From Big Pink and especially The Band. Everything after that is okay if you're really into `em, but none of them excited me. I am, however, a big fan of the early Canadian Squires and Levon and the Hawks singles, as well as the sides with Ronnie Hawkins. Add in the Big Pink outtakes originally released on The Basement Tapes and you've got a pretty great album that Never Was. The way to hear most of those is on The Band: A Musical History, an exhaustive 5 disk set. It's overlaps a lot with the two above, especially the CD reissues. But for what it's worth, most of the Hawks/Ronnie Hawkins/Canadian Squires and the Big Pink outtakes made my homemade comp, as did a half-dozen or so album cuts, singles, ("Don't Do It", "Get Up Jake", "Livin' in A Dream"). Get it from the library and rip it, or look for it online, is my advice.
Essential Reading
Greil Marcus' Mystery Train is one of the greatest rock and roll books ever. He spins a lot of purple hyperbole on The Band in this one, but he still has interesting things to say - in other words, he's not totally wrong even if he does overrate the hell out of them. Any rock and roll fan should read Marcus anyway. Levon Helm's This Wheel's On Fire is hotly-disputed (mostly by Robbie Robertson) but a hell of a good read, anyway.
Essential Viewing
The Band: The Authorized Biography is a decent documentary, but out of print and expensive. The Last Waltz is an elegant little film with some fine performances, if you can handle the egomania of it all. Muddy Waters, Dylan and a few others are well worth seeing.
