The Score

THE BAND were Jaime Robbie Robertson on guitar, Richard Manuel on piano, Rick Danko on bass, Levon Helm on drums and Garth Hudson on organ. Although all members of THE BAND featured with Ronnie Hawkins, as the Hawks, they were not the five man unit that we know and love until late 1964. Jerry Penfound was a member upon the group leaving Hawkins, playing horns, with Bruce Bruno on vocals, briefly. Renaming themselves Levon and the Hawks first, then the Canadian Squires and finally just The Hawks, THE BAND met Bob Dylan in 1965. Levon Helm and Robbie Robertson joined Dylan and his band on the concerts that followed the seminal electric performance with the Paul Butterfield Blues Band at the Newport Folk Festival. In September of that year, Dylan met with THE BAND (Manuel, Danko, Helm, Hudson and Robertson) to begin rehearsals for a series of live performances. These would lay the ground-work for possibly the greatest performances of Dylan’s career and perhaps a contender for the best Rock ‘n’ Roll concert tour of all time– as immortalised on the “Royal Albert Hall Concert” and Martin Scorcese’s documentary “No Direction Home”. Levon Helm had left the band in late 1965, not being able to cope with booing at Dylan’s electric concerts. In the early part of the North American dates from February to March, Sandy Konikoff was on drumming duties. Through the infamous European and Australian dates it was Mickey Jones, who had played with Johnny Rivers prior to replacing Konikoff, who was captured on the live recordings of ‘66.

In 1967, THE BAND (still the Hawks) assembled (still without Helm) at Bob Dylan’s house in Woodstock to start recording the material that would become known as the Basement Tapes.

As Michael Gray notes in The Bob Dylan Encyclopaedia:

“It’s been suggested (by Helm, who wasn’t around) that they began as early as March ’67, but more certain is that in June 1967 they assembled at Dylan’s house in Woodstock, and at that point the group and Dylan were recorded by Garth Hudson on primitive machinery.”

The material recorded during these sessions was traditional in nature. Including many that Dylan had attempted years earlier when he was breaking into the New York Folk scene. Over the course of the Basement Tapes Dylan would cover many songs, including The Auld Triangle (listed as the Banks of the Royal Canal), A Fool Such As I (a far superior version to the Nashville Skyline style recording, appearing on Dylan) and the song that Johnny Cash made famous Folsom Prison Blues. Throughout these sessions, as Gray again notes,

“… the four Helm-less band members spread themselves out into the multi instrumentalism for which they would later become famous and admired. Here we got, in addition to their primary instruments, Robertson playing drums, Manuel on drums (they needed someone on drums, after all) and harmonica,
Danko on fiddle and mandolin and Hudson on accordion, tenor sax, piano and clavinette.”

Sessions continued throughout the summer resulted in “another 67 tracks plus seven further fragments”. These took place mostly in the basement of Big Pink, a house near Dylan’s in West Saugerties. The songs recorded included the soon to be covered by THE BAND, I Shall Be Released.

Notice how Manuel soars above Dylan and doubles with him, lending the song the same fragility and beauty that would be so present on the Band’s debut Music From Big Pink. It should be clear to anyone that Dylan was in a highly prolific phase. The Basement Tapes as collected in the bootleg A Tree With Roots clocks in at over 5 hours. Two more sets of sessions occurred — “September–October and in October–November, all at ‘Big Pink’, with Levon Helm arriving in October”. This last set of sessions produced arguably the greatest material on the Basement Tapes with Tears of Rage and Goin’ To Acapulco both recorded. These two songs are also two of the best examples of the interplay between Dylan and THE BAND.

On Tears of Rage, as with I Shall Be Released, Manuel accompanies Dylan, foreshadowing how adept he would be at singing this particular song on Music From Big Pink. Dylan doubling with Manuel produces a different atmosphere than Manuel on his own. Although often criticised for his vocal ability, Dylan provides a mindful, measured performance that couples with Manuel perfectly. Danko also appears to be on backing vocals. It is a powerful example of both Dylan’s creative health in 1967 and of Manuel’s potential who co-wrote the song with him. This style of mournful, Hammond laden song would continue to suit Manuel’s voice and song-writing ability for the first three of The Band’s albums.

Goin To Acapulco is quite possibly the greatest song in the entire five hours of material. One of the greatest vocals of Dylan’s career, Garth Hudson’s amazing organ playing and Manuel, Danko and what sounds like Robertson on backing. The mix as featured on the official release doesn’t give you an accurate picture of how layered and joyous this song is. The mixing on the 1975 release is one of the main problems with Robertson’s revisionist attempt to give the people what they wanted. It is also incredibly misleading as it includes 7 recordings by THE BAND, featuring one traditional cover and a version of Dylan’s Don’t Ya Tell Henry. Although most of these songs were recorded in 1967, they had little if anything to do with the Basement Tapes. In fact, as Michael Grey states, “Bessie Smith was actually an outtake from the fourth Band album, Cahoots, and the others were almost as dubious”.

There were also overdubs present on Manuel’s Orange Juice Blues (Blues For Breakfast) that were most likely recorded prior to the album’s 1975 release. The original recording can be heard on the re-release of Music From Big Pink, sans saxophone.

Not to say that the songs by THE BAND on the official release are bad; there are some beautifully chilling songs that mix well with the tone of the Basement Tapes. Ain’t No More Cane is one, as is Katie’s Been Gone– another outtake from Music From Big Pink, also available on the re-release. Ruben Remus contains the same style of humour as Yea! Heavy and a Bottle of Bread or Please Mrs. Henry and may be a cast-off but it is a very pleasing cast-off. Overall, if you were to buy the album as released in 1975, you would not be disappointed. It is definitely something that affects you more when you are aware of what they didn’t include on the album. I’m Not There, Sign On the Cross, Quinn the Eskimo (the Mighty Quinn) and I Shall Be Released Sign On the Cross were all left off, although Sign On the Cross is the only song of these four still to get an official release.

I’m Not There

During the course of the Basement Tapes sessions, THE BAND would find their own identity and their own voice(s). In early 1968, they would start work on their debut album, Music From Big Pink.

You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere