After initially coming home from the record store assuming I’d purchased either the soundtrack to a new Pixar film centered around a giant, anthropomorphic flamingo, or the latest release from the older sister of early 2000s dance-pop diva P!nk, and finding myself sorely disappointed, I decided to give it a couple of listens anyway and, well, it began to grow on me.
*****
Once upon a time, there was the 19th century. Then, there was the 20th century. And then, nestled in a space beyond the realms of the established metaphysical plane, residing in a mystical, cosmological wormhole somewhere, there existed a century in between the two.
This is the century, I am convinced, from which the Band came.
Music from Big Pink released in 1968, you say? That’s got to be a misprint. I could have sworn this album was released in 1868. Yeah, it sounds like it came out during the Johnson administration, all right – the Andrew Johnson administration. What’s that? Records didn’t exist yet? You mean to tell me this 78 shellac disc of Ulysses S. Grant’s inaugural address that my great-great grandfather passed down to me as a sacred family heirloom is a fake?
I feel like this album crawled out of the primordial ooze of Matthew Brady daguerreotypes and Winslow Homer landscapes. This album just made love to Mark Twain, Walt Whitman, Willa Cather, and John Steinbeck, all on the very same night. If the Hatfields and McCoys had simply put down their guns, dropped acid, and formed a rock group, they might have recorded this album.
Questionably colorful metaphors aside, I would not wish to foster the impression, to those unfamiliar with Music from Big Pink, that it was undertaken as some kind of scholarly attempt, by militant folk revivalists, to recreate the sound of “traditional” American music. Now, a musical ensemble from 1968 could have recorded such an album, featuring only instrumentation and musical stylings that would have been in existence in 1868 and no later. If anyone out there is interested in that sort of thing, may I suggest the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, or perhaps the New Lost City Ramblers?
Any asthmatic coal miner or mustachioed telegraph operator transported from the 19th century, via time machine, in front of a stereo system blasting Music from Big Pink would notice anachronisms up the wazoo: distorted electric guitar tones, borderline psychedelic keyboard effects, a properly modern ‘60s-style drum kit, an array of studio-enhanced production techniques, etc. On the surface, the Band more or less resembles a conventional post-Beatles rock and roll group.
So then why does the album feel so old?
This, to me, is the Band’s great magic trick.
*****
It should have been love at first sight between this humbly-and-yet-boastfully-named collection of five gentlemen and me, but it was more like a furtive, awkward courtship.
One day, at seventeen years of age, while reading a highly complimentary review of the Band’s catalog, I came across a photo of the cover of their self-titled second album (AKA the Brown Album), and realized that it looked familiar. You see, my parents kept a highly disorganized pile of about sixty or seventy records in our not-terribly-spacious home, which they themselves never listened to – and I mean never – and, by golly, hadn’t I seen that Band album somewhere in the pile? Hmm. Well then. For the sweet price of nothing, I could put this ancient object on the ancient device and see what all the fuss was about.
Given a few of my recent preoccupations, you might say I’d been working my way up to these guys. Only a month or so earlier, I’d devoured the Essential Johnny Cash (1955-1983) like Oliver Twist licking the last drops of gruel from a bowl. I was also, at the time, knee deep in the kind of ‘60s and ‘70s films that took place in an evocative, nostalgically-tinted, predominantly Southern and Western America (Bonnie and Clyde, The Wild Bunch, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, The Last Picture Show, etc.). In addition to that, I’d just survived the burning hot cauldron known as my high school’s advanced placement U.S. History course. In other words, I’d been spending a lot of my time snorting that intoxicating drug known as the Ghost of America Past.
I held the album sleeve up to my face; the aesthetic – just the right shade of brown – had me at “hello.” The bushy mustaches, the unkempt hair, the woolen overcoats … mmm baby. Any mythmaking attempt by the Band’s art department to depict them as rugged inhabitants of a Walker Evans photograph had certainly convinced me. On the back of the jacket, there was even a quote from “The Darktown Strutters’ Ball,” a song from … did that say 1917? Yeah. Oh yeah. These were my guys.
So I put the album on and I … didn’t like it.
See, when I’d read all these detailed descriptions of “old-time Appalachia” and “pre-industrial, sepia-tinted America,” I automatically assumed that the Band were going to sound like one of two artists: 1) Creedence Clearwater Revival; 2) Elton John circa Tumbleweed Connection/Madman Across the Water/Honky Chateau. In retrospect, at least in the latter’s case, I was putting the cart before the horse, given that the Band served as practically Influence #1 on Elton and Bernie during that particular stretch of albums (Bernie even naming a song “Levon” for God’s sake).
But I think it’s fair to say that both Creedence and Elton, while drawing upon similar influences as the Band, were more, you know, “polished” and “radio-friendly” in their approach to recording. Bum notes and rickety uprights were not their style. By comparison, when I first heard the Band, I thought they sounded a bit … uh … amateurish? Like they didn’t know how to play their instruments very well? Like their singing was frequently off-key and grating and maybe they didn’t know it?
Already being familiar with Joan Baez’s hit version of “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down,” which gracefully gallops along like a locomotive on a bed of fluffy clouds, I found the Band’s original version, with its herky-jerky, stop-start rhythm, punctuated by irritating cymbal crashes, a bit of an … acquired taste. After having slurped the medicine of Baez’s clear, sweet, pitch-perfect voice, the Band’s harmonies kind of sounded like the harmonies of sickly patients at Bellevue.
Mind you, this was about a year or so before I began to bravely venture into the less commercially-oriented corners of the rock canon. I mean, if I thought the Band sounded rough, you should have seen my face the first time I heard Pavement’s Slanted and Enchanted.
And yet, here’s the funny part: I liked the idea of the Band so much, I decided to play the album again.
My father came into the living room and griped about how he’d “tried to get into these guys, but their voices are just so whiny, I couldn’t stand it.” A couple of the tracks began to stick their magnolia sap onto me, like “Raga Mama Rag” and “Up on Cripple Creek,” but overall, I concluded that I had to disagree with the critics on this one.
But still … it had an aura. Despite not caring for the production, or the presentation of the material, the material itself was growing on me. Yeah, I wished they weren’t croaking and wheezing their way through their melodies but … rather ingratiating melodies, damn it. Before I knew it, I was humming “Whispering Pines” to myself on an anxious bus ride to school at the start of my senior year, feeling encouraged and comforted by the intense imagery of a lost, frigid wanderer clinging to that “one star” as a guidepost. I was slowly coming around.
And apparently they had this other album, Music from Gargantuan Fuchsia or some nonsense like that, with some famous song on it called “The Heaviness” or what have you. Not long after my exposure to the Brown Album, while making a short film with a couple of classmates at a friend’s house, one of my peers decided that the “perfect” song to accompany the particular scene we were filming would be “The Weight” by the Band.
“Oh, the Band?” I replied smugly, eager to demonstrate my knowledge of their existence. “I kinda like them, even though they sound like they’re playing on trash cans in the back of an alley.”
Well, after he stuck his cassette copy of The Big Chill soundtrack into a boombox, I immediately recognized “The Weight,” just as every God-fearing American would. The Band did this song too? I mean, let’s face it: how many people even realize it’s called “The Weight”?
All right, now I really wanted to hear Music from Big Pink. Alas, the public library lacked a copy. None of my friends owned a copy. I hung in there for about eight more months, and then I cracked. I did something I almost never did.
I bought the album on CD … without hearing it first.
I mean, it had to at least be respectable, right? I couldn’t find any record guide that gave the album anything less than the maximum rating, and “The Weight” was on it, and the Brown Album was a keeper, so … time to roll the dice.
Well, I brought that (used) compact disc home, pressed play, and … I adored Music from Big Pink from start to finish on the very first listen.
Two albums by the same group, eliciting polar opposite first impressions, but why? Hardly any fans of the Band, or of classic rock in general, would describe the pair as sounding outrageously different. We’re not talking Harvest vs. Tonight’s the Night here. I suspect I had simply adjusted my expectations to such an intense degree, assuming that the album would need to grow on me, that the “whiny” vocals and “sloppy” harmonies no longer registered. My ears had become fully fluent in “Band.”
But listening to the two today, I feel like Big Pink does have more of a lush, layered, keyboard-heavy, “poppier” flavor than the self-titled album does. It’s not quite as dry. I recall once reading Al Kooper’s initial review of the album, published in Rolling Stone, in which he tossed out the Beach Boys as a possible influence, which might sound like an utterly daft observation to make, but if I violently squint my eyes … I can kind of see it? Despite all the group’s retro affectations, is their production aesthetic seriously too far removed from late ‘60s AM pop like the Buckinghams, the Rascals, or the Left Banke?
Perhaps one could be accused of leaning too hard into the whole “1868” schtick with analysis of the Band’s debut, when in reality that framework might more accurately be applied to the follow-up. In his review of Big Pink’s 50th anniversary for Pitchfork, Stephen Thomas Erlewine (I swear the phrase “Pitchfork contributor Stephen Thomas Erlewine” will always sound like some music journalist prank to me) writes:
From the outset, its originality was described in terms of genre, how Music From Big Pink draws from a number of American roots musics—country, blues, gospel, folk, gospel, rockabilly—without ever sounding distinctly like one of its inspirations. Such a hybrid has since become common, yet Music From Big Pink still sounds trapped out of time, lacking the simplicity of its predecessors or the po-faced sincerity of its disciples, and so much of this is due to how the album is executed with a casual disregard to authenticity. Robertson may have advocated for the Band to play as a unit, a savvy move that captures their elastic interplay, but [John] Simon didn’t produce the group as if they were a mere bar band. The very presence of Garth Hudson, an organist who doubled on horns, removed the Band from the confines of three-chord rock’n’roll, with his waves of texture evoking not just gospel but the heady horizons of psychedelia the Band reportedly rejected.
While it’s true that the 11 individual songs on Music From Big Pink are steeped in tradition, the album itself is resolutely modern, a studio concoction meant to expand the mind … the record contains so many textures, it nearly feels ornate: the plaintive “Lonesome Suzie” gains resonance with its washes of echo and horns, while “Chest Fever”—the hardest rocking number here—is a head trip, thanks to the roar of overdriven organ and indecipherable vocals … Music From Big Pink may be rooted in the earth but it exists entirely within the head.
In other words, the album might still be trippy, but trippy in more of a Bambi sort of way than in a Fantasia sort of way.
Indeed, let’s take a moment to acknowledge the contributions of producer and “sixth Band member” John Simon, who just may win my award for “Best Ever Year for a Producer Whose Entire Production Career Seemed to Last Only About a Year.” Talk about being on a roll, though: Leonard Cohen’s Songs of Leonard Cohen (December 27, 1967), Blood, Sweat & Tears’ Child is Father to the Man (February 21, 1968), the Band’s Music from Big Pink (July 1, 1968), Big Brother & the Holding Company’s Cheap Thrills (August 12, 1968), and hell, I’ll even throw in Gordon Lightfoot’s Did She Mention My Name? (January 1968).
(You know Gordon Lightfoot was sitting at home, enjoying a nice Nova Scotia lobster roll, reading my essay, and thinking to himself, “OK, cool, he’s listing all those great albums that John Simon produced in 1968, but … did he mention my album? Relax, Gordy, I got your back, go sip some coffee and write me the long-awaited prequel trilogy to “Canadian Railroad Trilogy,” with no Jar-Jar Binks in it please.)
But my point is, ethereal gems such as “Whispering Pines” notwithstanding, I feel like the “bar band” aesthetic that Erlewine suggests the group so skillfully avoided on Big Pink became a bit more pronounced on the follow-up. Think of stuff like “Lookout Cleveland” and “Jemima Surrender” (I’m sorry guys, but any song about a woman named Jemima just makes me think of pancake syrup).
Also, I suspect, by the time of the Brown Album, Robbie Robertson had started inhaling too much of his own hype and concluded he needed to become the “Voice of the People,” in the same sense that Jon Landau, upon becoming Springsteen’s manager, used his influence to encourage Springsteen to ditch all that fanciful wordplay and become “Mr. Proletariat Rock.” Like Nebraska or Tunnel of Love, the Brown Album strikes me as the kind of album that writes its own review.
To be fair, this shift at least gives it a slightly separate flavor from its predecessor, but in my eyes, it also adds a whiff of self-consciousness that I don’t detect as much in Big Pink. “Oh to be home again, down in old Virginny/With my very best friend, they call him Ragtime Willie”? “Our horse Jethro, well he went mad/I can’t ever remember things being that bad”? Robertson’s just pulling this archaic hillbilly lingo out of his ass! “The Night They Drive Old Dixie Down”? Come on, man. At least when fellow Canadian Neil Young dabbled in Southern thematic cosplay, he picked the right side.
So yes, sometimes I wonder whether I (and everyone else, for that matter) have erroneously attributed the “old-timey” qualities of the second album to the first album. Hold on a second, let me open the gatefold sleeve of Music from Big Pink, and … hey, what’s this?
Yeah. I don’t think there’s too much erroneous attribution going on here.
But unlike its less sonically opulent follow-up, I think it really might be the lyrical content, not the arrangements or production, that give Big Pink its “Timeless with a capital T” aura. I doubt a single phrase on this album would have sounded odd coming out of a person’s mouth in 1899. Even the Spike Jones reference in “Up on Cripple Creek” might have been too unconscionably modern for Big Pink. Here I feel like the antiquated spicing isn’t added in that blatant, “Hey everybody, look at me, I’m writing songs about labor unions and Sherman’s March and rocking chairs and all that Country Bear Jamboree shit” sort of way, but in more of an impressionistic, elusive, cockeyed sort of way.
And what I find most impressive about this unified thematic and stylistic vision is how it appears to have been formed (at least if the album credits are to be believed) by three entirely separate lyricists – and one of those three lyricists … wasn’t even a proper member of the band.
(Or the Band. The group. The collective artistic entity. Look, don’t get cute with me.)
*****
I should probably mention Bob Dylan at some point.
The story, as told to me around crisp autumn campfires:
In mid-1966, riding high on the success of Blonde on Blonde (and a bottomless supply of herbal jazz cigarettes), having been anointed the snarling, verbiage-spewing prophet of the age, and having just finished a contentious tour backed by the future members of the Band (sans Levon), Dylan unexpectedly suffered a mysterious motorcycle accident (almost as if by design?) and immediately absconded from view.
During the tail end of his recovery, in the summer of 1967, he invited his four musical companions into a house in upstate New York that came to be known as “Big Pink,” and, with their genial assistance, he wrote and recorded the material that came to be known as “The Basement Tapes.” Dylan and his cohorts boldly, heroically, and presciently paid zero attention to the prevailing musical trends of the day. Legend has it that, after an acquaintance played Sgt. Pepper for him at a local party, Dylan reportedly growled, “Turn that crap off.”
Which is a ridiculous thing for a musician in 1967 to say. But if anyone in the history of popular music is allowed to growl “Turn that crap off” upon hearing Sgt. Pepper, it’s Dylan, isn’t it? The man was on his own separate trajectory. He was in a whole different space.
Apparently, after the motorcycle accident, he must have put all those Ginsberg and Burroughs anthologies back on the shelf, and picked up the Bible and a stack of comic books instead. Huddled in that basement with his likeminded compatriots, Dylan wrote songs, songs, and more songs. He wrote songs that consisted of nothing more than odd, out-of-fashion phrases repeated for two minutes straight (“Lo and Behold,” “Apple Suckling Tree”?). He wrote songs inspired by random pop culture free association (“Quinn the Eskimo”?). He wrote several songs, I presume, entirely on the spot (“Clothes Line Saga,” “Yea! Heavy and a Bottle of Bread”?).
But amongst the ribald larks and tossed-off homages lay a solid cluster of compositions that those around him surely knew were anything but throwaways or goofs. So while Dylan himself recorded precisely none of this material, quickly moving on to compose tracks for his legitimate follow-up to Blonde on Blonde, John Wesley Harding, everyone else in the rock community took one quick listen and said, “I’ll take one of those, thank you very much.” (See, for example, my 10th favorite album of the ‘60s.)
Now, being the admirer of the Band that I am, I would love to state here that the other members instantly found their voice and collaborated on more than a handful of songs with their great reclusive leader during this now-mythical period, but the reality, as I understand it, is that almost all the material was being composed by Dylan. Famously, when Columbia records decided to release an official compilation of the 1967 recordings in 1975, Dylan could hardly be bothered with the project, so Robertson, perhaps sensing a golden opportunity for a little self-flattering revisionism, sprinkled in eight demos that, according to rough estimates, were recorded by the Band between 1968 and 1970 (long after the era in question), between sixteen other tracks that came from the actual 1967 tapes. From Wikipedia:
[Clinton] Heylin also takes exception to Robertson’s passing off the Band’s songs as originating from the basement sessions. By including eight Band recordings to Dylan’s sixteen, he says, “Robertson sought to imply that the alliance between Dylan and the Band was far more equal than it was: ‘Hey, we were writing all these songs, doing our own thing, oh and Bob would sometimes come around and we’d swap a few tunes.'”
This is apparently not quite … uh … true? Wikipedia goes on:
In justifying their inclusion, Robertson explained that he, Hudson and Dylan did not have access to all the basement recordings: “We had access to some of the songs. Some of these things came under the heading of ‘homemade’ which meant a Basement Tape to us.” Robertson has suggested that the Basement Tapes are, for him, “a process, a homemade feel” and so could include recordings from a wide variety of sources.
Uh … that might have been Robbie Robertson’s definition of “the Basement Tapes,” but that sure as shit wasn’t anybody else’s definition of “the Basement Tapes.” But nice try, Robbie.
The funny thing is, back in college, not being the most hardcore Dylan devotee myself, when I got my hands on that 1975 Basement Tapes release, the recordings I found myself personally preferring the most … were the Band’s! Sure, in retrospect, they probably should have been released on a separate compilation, but that’s not those songs’ fault. In other words, to anyone else approaching that 1975 release for the first time: please don’t slag off those eight tracks on account of Robertson’s ahistorical jujitsu.
I guess what I’m sloppily attempting to clarify for the historical record is this: while Dylan and the Band did write and record a slew of material in the basement of Big Pink in the summer of 1967, and while the Band did title their debut album “Music from Big Pink,” leading the listener to conclude that all the material on the album was birthed in that specific basement during that specific summer, only three of the songs that appear on the album in question, as far as I know, can be traced to that period with Dylan.
But unlike Robertson’s 1975 shenanigans, I don’t think the Band titling the album Music from Big Pink was some kind of blasphemous stretching of the truth. OK, so maybe the Band hadn’t been composing material equal to Dylan’s during the “Basement Tapes” period (how many bands would have been?), but from the aural evidence before me, I have to conclude that, whoa nelly, in the months that followed, did the student sure learn from the master. If most of the final product wasn’t literally composed and rehearsed in Big Pink, that’s not the point. The material that followed became imbued with the spirit of Big Pink.
What I’m trying to say is that the Band sort of grew out of Bob Dylan’s rib. But it turned out to be one hell of a rib.
*****
Bob Dylan and I have a … complicated relationship. Let’s see if I can avoid turning this admiring, complimentary essay about the Band into a rambling, curmudgeonly essay about my convoluted opinion of Bob Dylan, but I suppose, before I delve into the three Dylan compositions that received their first public exposure through their appearance on this album, that I ought to at least summarize my position.
I know people who feel that Dylan is the greatest artist of the rock era. They’ve seen him live 600 times, own every volume of the Bootleg series, and probably pre-ordered his triple-disc album of vocal pop standards. While fully aware that his singing voice is “unconventional,” they feel that it suits his material well. When they hear Dylan sing, it sounds to them the way Sam Cooke’s voice might sound to me. It’s a feature, not a bug. They might even prefer Dylan to the Beatles, not just as a songwriter, but as a performer and recording artist.
I am not one of those people.
I know people who can’t stand to listen to a single Dylan recording aside from perhaps “Lay Lady Lay.” While they can appreciate his contribution to the arc of popular music history, they would rather appreciate it through the talents of, say, the Byrds, Peter, Paul & Mary, Manfred Mann, or Jimi Hendrix instead.
But I’m not one of those people either!
Here I am, stuck squarely between the two extremes, the traumatized child caught in the middle of an ugly divorce.
Like the naysayers, I don’t feel that Dylan’s overall performing and recording approach tends to do justice to his material – although the funny thing is, every once in a while, I feel like it does. There are about thirty Dylan songs that I truly love (and indeed, I mean the Dylan versions), but they aren’t necessarily the Dylan songs I think I’m supposed to love. As a rock scholar, I have enjoyed exploring his intimidatingly sprawling catalog from time to time. But honestly, one of my main issues with Dylan isn’t so much his voice but the attitude I feel like he has often projected in his work.
Dylan strikes me as sort of a “part-time” part-time Buddhist. Often I get the sense, at least in his highly touted mid-‘60s material, that the most intense personal issue he is struggling with is that other people are annoying him too much. There’s too high a level of confidence for me to relate to. I prefer a little more self-doubt and self-loathing in my musical icons. I’m not sure how many “scathing put-down” songs such as “Maggie’s Farm,” “Like a Rolling Stone,” “Positively 4th Street,” and “Leopard-Skin Pillbox Hat” I truly need in my life. I’ve always wanted to be moved by Dylan lyrics the same way I’ve been moved by, say, the lyrics of “Eleanor Rigby” or “Strawberry Fields Forever.”
Often the dominant thought in my brain as I’m listening to a Bob Dylan album is, “I kind of like this, but I would probably like this more if …” There is a version of Dylan that I find myself able to wholeheartedly embrace, and his name is Neil Young.
But see, I do want that Dylan influence in my music; I just don’t want too strong a dosage of undiluted Dylan. He’s like tomatoes. I want him in stuff, but I’m usually not in the mood to just eat raw, uncooked Dylan. In that sense, the amount of Dylan in Music from Big Pink, for my palette, is juuuust right. Gimme three tracks written (or co-written) by Dylan, and hell, I’ll even take an album cover painted by the guy.
I once read a review that described this particular artistic creation like so: “Terrible painting; great album cover.” Though some may question whether Dylan potentially submitted the handiwork of his eight-year-old child to Capitol Records and claimed it as his own, the overall quality of the draftsmanship hardly concerns me. The critical question is not so much why six individuals are depicted instead of five, but rather: an elephant? Why an elephant? (Perhaps the misplaced pachyderm represents Dylan himself, the proverbial “elephant in the room”?)
At any rate, I wonder if all that sitting in his basement, post-motorcycle accident, pondering where the hell his life and career were going, potentially allowed Dylan to tap into his inner Eleanor Rigby, because suddenly he came up with lyrics that I find markedly closer to “full-time” part-time Buddhism than his previous fare:
Tears of rage, tears of grief
Why must I always be the thief?
Come to me now, you know we’re so alone
And life is brief
See, that’s more like it. I knew he had it in him.
And yet … what does it mean? “And now the heart is filled with gold/As if it was a purse/But oh, what kind of love is this/Which goes from bad to worse?” I suspect the only person more amused by Dylanologists’ quixotic attempts to parse the deeper symbolic significance of every speck and crumb of Dylan lyrics than myself … is probably Bob Dylan.
Quotes from various rock scholars on Wikipedia suggest that “Tears of Rage” is: 1) an homage to Shakespeare’s King Lear; 2) a statement on the disillusionment of Vietnam veterans; 3) a modern retelling of the Old Testament books Psalms and Isaiah; 4) an evocation of a naming ceremony for a child. Ever helpful, upon the release of the The Bootleg Series Vol. 11: The Basement Tapes Complete, and after allowing fifty years of rampant speculation, “Dylan cited the dropping of China’s first hydrogen bomb as an impetus for the song.”
Man, I’m telling you, no one can fuck with Dylan scholars better than Bob Dylan can.
The thing is, not knowing what the lyrics “mean” often bothers the bejesus out of me, but on Music from Big Pink, I don’t really want to know. What I admire about the lyrics, alternately penned by Dylan, Robertson, and Richard Manuel, is how they manage to avoid describing specific scenarios while nevertheless suggesting engrossing, unfolding dramas. It’s as if every song initially featured a verse that perfectly explained EVERYTHING, and then the Band mischievously chopped that verse out, stood back, and said, “There!,” like a sculptor removing an unnecessary chunk of marble from a postmodern opus.
Sorting out the lyrics of Music from Big Pink is like walking into a movie 20 minutes late. There are clues and hints and signposts, and yet no one’s bothering to spell anything out, because, hey, it’s not their fault you missed the first 20 minutes. You sense that a compelling story is quite clearly developing; you just haven’t the faintest idea what that story is. It’s the same old riddle, only starting from the middle. And how the album’s three main lyricists managed to get on the same page with this hocus pocus is beyond me. I’ll be honest, if I’d received a copy of Big Pink with all the writing credits hidden, I doubt I would have been able to accurately guess who’d written what.
And kudos to the Band for not even horsing around, placing a wailing dirge as the opening track to their debut album, as if they’d plopped straight from the womb to the cradle already exhausted and world-weary (although I’m not sure why Robertson is strumming away on what appears to be an early precursor to Peter Frampton’s “talkbox,” but there you have it).
While I wouldn’t say that Dylan’s performance on the Basement Tapes version of “Tears of Rage” fails to convey the gravity of the sentiment, the stakes don’t strike me as particularly high. He sounds like a man who has just burnt his toast. But when the words “Come to me now, you know we’re so alone” fly out of Richard Manuel’s tortured, unsteady pipes instead, I’m thinking to myself, “Now this guy sounds like he knows a thing or two about loneliness.”
No complaints about “Tears of Rage” in any way, shape, or form, but for me, “To Kingdom Come” is the track that really kicks the horse out of the barn. I’m inclined to call it “funky,” but if so, it’s funky in a more of a “cattle trail camp meeting” sort of way than a “Kool & the Gang/Bootsy Collins” sort of way. Notice how, on the first measure of each verse, the track seems to momentarily dangle in the air, until Levon (I assume using a battered suitcase for a kick drum and a bag of silver coins for a snare) establishes a solid “two-step” groove (with the accent on the first beat), punctuating the end of the verses with an emphatic three-beat fill as Robertson’s guitar chords rise three steps in tandem (“it all comes back on you”). And I doubt Bootsy Collins would’ve ever come up with sentiments quite like these:
Forefather pointed to kingdom come
Sadly told his only son
Just be careful what you do
It all comes back on you
False witness spread the news
Somebody’s gonna lose
Either she or me or you
Nothing we can do
Eh? What is going … on here? Who … are these people? Where … are we? I know not, but wherever we are, I know it’s a place far from a land of McDonald’s, Kmart, and Hertz Rent-a-Car. And yet, if this is some foggy apparition of backwoods frontier life, it’s not an apparition free of fear, dread, guilt, and violence:
So don’t you say a word
Or reveal a thing you’ve heard
Time will tell you well
If you truly, truly fell
Tarred and feathered, yeah
Thistles and thorns
One or the other
He kindly warned
Now you look out the window tell me
What do you see?
I see a golden calf pointing
Back at me
“A golden calf pointing/Back at me?” I almost picture some calf with its forefinger extended, Nelson Muntz-style, emitting a grating “Ha Ha!” at the narrator. But despite the plethora of dark imagery (“sadly,” “false,” “fell,” “thorns,” “warned,” “sink,” “evil eye”), to these ears at least, the music bubbles over with joy and excitement, especially given the rollicking transitions between what I guess I should call the verse (“Forefather pointed to kingdom come”), the bridge (“So don’t you say a word”), and the chorus (“Tarred and feathered, yeah”). It’s like it’s giddily tumbling over itself. I still haven’t figured out what time signature the bridge is in; I’m going to guess … 13/5?
Instrumental ingenuity aside, I declare the not-so-secret weapon that plays such a large role in the generating of that sense of relentlessly forward motion to be the Band’s creative use of ensemble singing. From the sound of things, it’s Richard Manuel leading the charge on the verses, then he graciously hands it off to Rick Danko during the bridge, only for Richard and Levon to jointly handle the chorus, along with … hold on a minute …
What is that sound? Is that … Robbie Robertson on vocals? Ladies and gentlemen, in a group with three lead singers, I present to you the fourth, one Mr. Jaime Royal Robertson of Toronto, Canada:
I been sitting in here for so darn long
Waitin’ for the end to come along
Holy roaster on the brink
Take a choice, swim or sink.
Jesus, is that what Robbie Robertson sounds like as a singer? You know the incarnation of Voldemort that’s like a half-dead spirit without a host body? He kind of sounds like that. “Take a choice, swim or sink”? I hate to break it to you Robbie, but it sounds like your voice has already made that choice for you. But see, I actually think Robbie’s screechy turn on the mic improves the song, because this merely means that, by comparison, once Manuel and the others come back in, they sound amazing:
False witness, cast an evil eye
Said I cannot tell a lie
Haints and saints don’t bother me
I’m not alone you see.
And to think that I once found the other guys too whiny. Whininess is in the eye of the beholder, as the false witness who cannot tell a lie once said.
Almost as shocking as Robertson’s operatic soprano is his lone guitar solo. I once read a review of Big Pink in which the writer highlighted the album’s lack of guitar solos, presumably to contrast it with the bombastic, navel-gazing blues rock propagated by the big London and San Francisco bands of the day, which, according to the Great Mythic Legend of ‘60s Rock, the release of Big Pink proceeded to banish to oblivion – a myth which I’d claim is not entirely untrue – but technically this writer was mistaken, because there is one – count it – one guitar solo on Music from Big Pink, and let’s just say that Robbie Robertson does a hell of a lot with only a little. While I respect the group’s decision to fade the track at the 3:22 mark, personally, I kind of wish the song went on and on in an endless loop that would only cease at the dimming of the sun.
But it’s all right, because the wonders continue with Manuel’s “In a Station.” Unlike other “roots rock” groups whose chord progressions tended not to stray too far from a 12-bar blues template (such as ZZ Top or Lynyrd Skynyrd), I find the Band’s melodies surprisingly eager to travel adventurously up and down the scale in a fashion more indebted to classical music or Broadway showtunes. For instance, how many “bluesy Southern rock” songs go where the melody of “In a Station” goes? The verse (“Once I climbed up the face of a mountain/And ate the wild fruit there”) is like a swaying lullaby, but then, huh, the chords take a left turn at “Isn’t everybody dreaming,” until Manuel unexpectedly ascends during the phrase “Can’t we have something to feeeeel?”
Damn. Like, who expected the notes to go there?
And if you were hoping for that to be followed by Manuel wordlessly, achingly humming in a sea of reverb during a brief instrumental tag, with Levon apparently slapping his thighs for percussion, well, you got your wish. “Must be some way to repay you/Out of all the good you gave/If a rumor should delay you/Love seems so little to say”? Jesus, guys. Would you stop doling out those beautifully cryptic, chimerical vibes in every freaking lyric? You’re going to give me a heart attack here.
Well, “Caledonia Mission” gives my coronary tract a bit of a breather, as sort of a less funky cousin of “To Kingdom Come,” with the simultaneous piano-and-guitar riff calling to mind a metal spring having a bad day. Three observations about the lyrics (by Robertson): 1) This may be the best usage of the word “magistrate” in the history of popular music; 2) This may also be the best usage of assonance in the history of popular music: “Did you trip or slip on her gifts?”; 3) As a knowledgeable student of heavy metal lore, I am fully aware of those who worship pentagrams, but what does it mean for an individual to “believe in [a] hexagram”? Finally, why “Caledonia” in the song title? I know the Band’s future pal Van Morrison had some quasi-mystical obsession with the word “Caledonia,” but to me it just sounds like someone with a cold trying to pronounce “California.”
One smart touch, though, is the manner in which “Caledonia Mission,” and most of the other tracks on the album’s first side for that matter, seem to end without a proper, grand resolving chord, like they all just sort of peter out in an enigmatic shrug or a quizzical question mark, forcing the track that immediately follows to reluctantly carry on with the ever-present burden of some unspoken collective toil.
Speaking of unspoken collective toil: when playing Music from Big Pink for friends and acquaintances unfamiliar with it, I’m always a little antsy watching them make their way through first four tracks (much as I’m personally fond them), because I know they won’t be fully hooked until they get to the fifth one. Woe to the listener who turns the album off before “The Weight,” is all I’m saying.
I remember loaning my copy of Big Pink to a pal in college who I’d already indoctrinated into the ways of the Stones, Creedence, and the Flying Burrito Brothers. The next time I saw him, he shared his reaction like so: “You know, the first couple of songs, kind of low-key, but I was digging it, and then ‘The Weight’ comes on and I’m like, ‘Oh, this song? They did this song?’ I mean, they already had me, but …” He chuckled in the fashion of a man who had just witnessed the world’s most lopsided boxing match. “Hell, that clinched it.”
A solitary acoustic guitar rings out like smoke from a mesquite-drenched barbecue pit. Come on over mister, bring your plate … you’re about to put on a little “Weight.” With three authoritative tom-tom smacks, Levon sets the feast in motion:
I pulled in to Nazareth, was feelin’ bout half past dead
I just need some place where I can lay my head
“Hey mister can you tell me where a man might find a bed?”
He just grinned and shook my hand, “No” was all he said.”
Any red-blooded American male whose chest does not swell at the sound of those words should probably have his citizenship revoked.
[producer whispers into earpiece]
Wait, seriously? Four-fifths of the Band were Canadian?
You have got to be shitting me. Well stuff my mouth with a maple leaf.
But “The Weight” is such a radio, soundtrack, and beer commercial staple that I’m guessing most people probably miss what an absurdist gas its lyrics are. According to Wikipedia, Robbie Robertson’s chief lyrical inspiration was the non-linear, religiously fraught cinema of Luis Buñuel, although I partially suspect that he decided to drop this impressively intellectual and outré “source of inspiration” long after the fact in a calculated attempt to cozy up to his best bud Martin Scorsese:
[Buñuel] did so many films on the impossibility of sainthood. People trying to be good in Viridiana and Nazarin, people trying to do their thing. In “The Weight” it’s the same thing. People like Buñuel would make films that had these religious connotations to them but it wasn’t necessarily a religious meaning. In Buñuel there were these people trying to be good and it’s impossible to be good. In “The Weight” it was this very simple thing. Someone says, “Listen, would you do me this favor? When you get there will you say ‘hello’ to somebody or will you give somebody this or will you pick up one of these for me? Oh? You’re going to Nazareth, that’s where the Martin guitar factory is. Do me a favor when you’re there.” This is what it’s all about. So the guy goes and one thing leads to another and it’s like “Holy shit, what’s this turned into? I’ve only come here to say ‘hello’ for somebody and I’ve got myself in this incredible predicament.” It was very Buñuelish to me at the time.
Yeah … can we get a fact-checker on this? Anyway, the first verse, I love you, you’re beautiful, don’t ever change, but I think the second verse is my favorite:
I picked up my bag, I went lookin’ for a place to hide
Then I saw ‘em, Carmen and the devil walkin’ side by side
I said “Hey Carmen, come on let’s go downtown”
She said “I got to go but my friend can stick around.”
Get it? Her “friend” that can stick around … is the devil? I interpret it like this: there are people in our lives whose company we enjoy, and positive elements of human existence we would all prefer to experience, but often we get saddled with the unpleasant people and the less-than-desirable aspects of human existence instead, and we have no choice but to cope. Like Marcello in La Dolce Vita, we go in for the kiss but have to settle for the punch in the face. The vibe Levon gives me on this one is: “Hey man, nothin’ you can do, just gotta catch that Cannonball to the next town.”
(Also: “Crazy Chester followed me, and he caught me in the fog/He said I will fix your rack, if you’ll take Jack, my dog”? For the longest time, I thought he sang “rat” instead of “rack,” although how precisely one would “fix” a rat is hard to say [like, neuter it?]. I simply assumed this strange request is what prompts Rick Danko’s comically Andy Devine-esque “I said wh-hait a minute Chess-tuur.”)
While I would not begrudge “The Weight” one iota of its status, for me the album’s most hilarious employment of linguistic imagination (courtesy of Manuel), tastiest use of ensemble vocals, and tastiest everything else for that matter, might be “We Can Talk.”
Allow me to slip into my best boxing announcer voice. In the left corner, we have: Rick Danko! In the right corner: Levon Helm! And in the center of the ring: Richard Manuel! And … there’s the bell:
Danko and Manuel: We can talk about it now
Helm: It’s that same old riddle, only startin’ from the middle
Danko and Manuel: I’d fix it but I don’t know how
Helm: Well we could try to reason, but she might think it’s treason
Manuel: One voice for all, echoing along the hall
Danko: echoing along the hall
Helm: echoing along the hall
Whoa! Their voices legitimately start echoing around the stereo spectrum, but that’s no echo effect, my friend – that’s simply Manuel, Danko, and Helm singing their lines at strategically staggered times. I joked that I would turn my rendition of these lyrics into a boxing round, but this is literally a round. And then, all in unison, they tie up the end of the verse with an emphatic “Don’t give up on Father Claus.” Who’s giving up on Father Clause here? I didn’t say anything about giving up on Father Clause. I resent that insinuation.
The parsing of vocal duties in the second verse, while similarly designed, is switched around just enough to keep humble listeners on their toes, as the lyrics take an even goofier and more arcane turn:
Manuel and Helm: Come, let me show you how
Danko: To keep the wheels turnin’ you’ve got to keep the engines churnin’
Helm: Well did you ever milk a cow?
Manuel: Milk a cow
Danko: I had the chance one day, but I was all dressed up for Sunday
Alas, this poor man! For the only time in his life, the precious opportunity of squeezing the udders of a bovine came his way, and yet, in a cruel twist of fate, he could not take advantage, as he was sporting his finest linens in an effort to present his most sartorially impressive self to the Lord.
But what’s this? Out of the blue, a key change, a tempo change, and Manuel initially singing two lines unaccompanied, joined by Helm for the last two. Now, I challenge you to find me one single individual residing in the Western Hemisphere who will freely admit to not being the least bit amused by the following lyrics:
It seems to me we’ve been holding something underneath our tongues
I’m afraid if you ever got a pat on the back it would likely burst your lungs
Stop me if I should sound kind of down in the mouth
But I’d rather be burned in Canada than to freeze here in the South
This is like the twisted backwoods hillbilly version of Robert Frost’s “Fire and Ice.” I think Manuel’s falsetto “Woo-ooh” in the center channel, quickly followed by Danko and Helm’s voices flanking him on the left and the right as they dive straight into the last verse (“Mowin’ that eternal plow”), might be the absolute peak of Music from Big Pink. That is it, right there, at the 2:13 mark of “We Can Talk.” Put it in the books.
At this point I might as well include the third verse, arguably just as enigmatically off-the-wall as the preceding two:
Danko and Helm: Mowin’ that eternal plow
Manuel: We’ve got to find a sharper blade, or have a new one made
Danko and Helm: Rest a while and cool your brow
Manuel: Don’t you see there’s no need to slave, the whip is in the grave
While Manuel and Helm tiptoe around “No salt, no trance, you know it’s safe now to take a backward glance,” Danko comes storming in on the left channel, like a man who’s slept through his alarm clock and now finds himself late for work, with “YOU KNOW IT’S SAFE TO TAKE A BACKWARD GLANCE!” Whoa. Easy there Rick, the big meeting hasn’t even started yet.
*****
So, at this point you might be thinking to yourself, “This sure is a lot of love for an album that only comes in at #8 on the guy’s list.” Well, I guess I don’t look forward to Big Pink’s last five tracks as much as I do the first six tracks. I’m not saying I dislike any of them. I wouldn’t accuse the album of “running out of steam.” They just don’t tickle me pink (big pink?) to quite the same extent.
First of all, after such an incredible run of original material, there’s … a cover? What the deuce? I initially became familiar with “The Long Black Veil” via Johnny Cash, both through his 1965 studio version and his Live at Folsom Prison version, although I didn’t consider the song a particular highlight of his catalog in either incarnation. It was one of those “Hmm, I can see why other people would like this, but for me it kind of plods along” songs. Therefore, when I saw the track listed on the back of the Big Pink CD, I thought, “Oh God, that song? I have to sit through another version of that stupid gothic, melodramatic, adultery/capital punishment soap opera again?”
Notice, also, how “The Long Black Veil” lyrically deviates from the rest of Big Pink by featuring a proper narrative and storyline. Should’ve saved it for the next album, guys. “I spoke not a word, though it meant my life/I had been in the arms of my best friend’s wife.” Am I missing something here? Just admit you were in the arms of your best friend’s wife! It’s an affair. They happen all the time. This guy would rather die than spill the beans on an affair? Yeesh. Different era I guess.
However, I was pleasantly surprised to discover that I enjoyed the Band’s version more than Johnny Cash’s version(s). It must be Garth Hudson’s organ goosing the track along, pushing it into that AM sunshine pop territory, that keeps it from dragging. That said, just because I like it more doesn’t mean I like it a lot more. It’s nice, it’s cool, it belongs on the album, but to me, it’s a bit of a momentum slower.
And I’ll say this about “Chest Fever”: as with Dylan, I enjoy Garth Hudson’s organ in stuff, but I’m not sure how much raw, uncooked Garth Hudson’s organ I can handle when it’s all by itself. Anyone else listen to the opening of “Chest Fever” and feel like they’re at a ball game? And unlike the lyrics on the rest of the album, which give me the impression of walking into a film 20 minutes late, with this one, I get the impression of walking into a wayward experimental student film 20 minutes late – the kind that wouldn’t have even made sense if I’d caught it from the beginning. “She’s been down in the dunes and she’s dealt with the goons”? “ ‘She’s stoned’ said the Swede, and the moon calf agreed”? (I used to think the lyric was “and the moon count to three,” which makes just as much sense as the real one.) But … it’s spooky, it’s heavy … among the last five tracks, it’s probably the one I enjoy the most. I’m even fond of Three Dog Night’s version!
My lone observation on “Lonesome Suzie”: I am perennially amused and/or annoyed by the sound of Richard Manuel’s vocals growing increasingly more and more choked as the song progresses (“I guuuesss juuuust whuaaght-ching you”). The Fine Young Cannibals’ Roland Gift … starts here.
And then, here comes Bobby Z. again:
If your memory serves you well
We were going to meet again and wait
So I’m going to unpack all my things
And sit before it gets too lateNo man alive will come to you
With another tale to tell
And you know that we shall meet again
If your memory serves you well
But … when did we meet the first time? Which meeting am I remembering? I don’t even remember what I ate for breakfast this morning, so how can I remember some unnamed meeting with some unnamed man with a tale to tell (or not to tell)? The plot … thickens.
Now, if the Band’s version of “This Wheel’s on Fire” had remained the only version I’d ever heard, I probably wouldn’t have much to complain about, but my issue is, out of the five or six renditions I’ve become acquainted with, it might be my least favorite?
My peers partial to ‘80s alternative goth are likely familiar with Siouxsie and the Banshees’ version, but I’m not so sure about that one either. Although Dr. Byrds & Mr. Hyde (released in March 1969 as the follow-up to Sweetheart of the Rodeo) is far from what one might call a “peak-era” Byrds album, I have to say, I dig their take on “This Wheel’s on Fire,” which, with its fuzztone guitars and balls-to-the-wall drumming, is easily the fieriest. I’m also partial to Ian & Sylvia’s twangy, countrified interpretation that appears on their album Nashville, released almost in conjunction with Big Pink. And let’s not forget Julie Driscoll with Brian Auger and the Trinity’s highly non-rustic version, which peaked at #5 in the UK.
However, to my own everlasting surprise, of all the versions of “This Wheel’s on Fire” I’ve had the great fortune to hear, I don’t think I’ve enjoyed any of them more than the “original” version by Bob Dylan and the Band that appears on the Basement Tapes, which I think Mr. Z sings effectively enough (for him), and which I think possesses the right amount of creepy-crawly unease in its veins.
My two main issues with the Band’s version: 1) It’s too fast. Dylan, the Byrds, and Ian & Sylvia all take it at a slower tempo, which emphasizes the melody’s sinister, ghoulish quality, whereas I feel like the Band’s version comes off as a hasty run-through by comparison; 2) What in God’s name is Garth Hudson playing? It sounds like a celeste as filtered through an intergalactic sci-fi laser beam. I picture the notes skittering around on an air hockey table. Wikipedia informs me that it is, in fact, a “Rocksichord through a telegraph key.” Not sure if that was the best instrumental choice, is all I’m saying.
On a similar note, why did Richard Manuel decide to sing “I Shall Be Released,” the album’s third Dylan interpretation, in a screechy falsetto that I’m not convinced he could reach with ease? The rest of the arrangement generally works for me: I love the opening, unaccompanied piano notes that remind me of the intro to Bette Midler’s “The Rose,” Garth Hudson’s proto-Tangerine Dream keyboard atmospherics, Levon’s gentle use of brushes (?) … if Manuel had just bothered to sing it in his normal register, then I’d be all set. I think my favorite version of “I Shall Be Released” might be the half-finished outtake Gram Parsons attempted with the Burrito Brothers.
But good God, talk about some glorious lyrics to end an album on:
They say everything can be replaced
They say every distance is not near
So I remember every face
Of every man who put me here
I see my light come shinin’
From the west down to the east
Any day now, any day now
I shall be released
But how could the … the sun sets in the … but that must mean the Earth is spinning in the … ah, just go with it.
They say every man needs protection
They say that every man must fall
Yet I swear I see my reflection
Somewhere so high above this wall
Like, he sees his reflection in the sky? Or is there like a mirror on the ceiling? Maybe he’s trapped inside a discotheque?
Now, yonder stands a man in this lonely crowd
A man who swears he’s not to blame
All day long, I hear him shouting so loud
Just crying out that he was framed
Eh, the guy’s probably just as guilty as everyone else in this hideous alternate universe that features a reversed rotation of the Earth, right? Why, if I had a dime for every nutcase in this joint who adamantly claimed his innocence, I’d be a millionaire.
*****
Being the devout part-time Buddhist that I am, I know I’m supposed to appreciate the present with all the enthusiasm I can muster, but I can’t help but gravitate toward works of art that so thoroughly and convincingly conjure up the potent flavor of a long lost era – an era which, whenever I’m within the presence of such a work of art, I’m inclined to strongly prefer to my own, despite possessing no valid method of comparison. Would I have really rather lived in small-town Appalachia in 1899? I’d have probably come down with cholera or scarlet fever within the first day.
Also, not to be one of “those” people, but what would daily life in small-town Appalachia in 1899 have been like for a person with, say, skin color a tad darker than mine, or breasts a tad larger than mine, or a fellow with an attraction to, uh, Lonesome “Sebastian” instead of Lonesome Suzie? In other words, I concede that not everyone would long to jump into a Band-themed chalk pavement drawing, Mary Poppins-style, and frolic in the wheat fields and hay bales as I would.
But if the “old-timey America” which Music from Big Pink so evocatively captures is a myth, isn’t that kind of the point? Wouldn’t you rather live in the Band’s version of old-timey America than the actual old-timey America? And as far as I’m concerned, the Band’s version of old-timey America is a place where everyone of every background is welcome, no matter your race, color, or creed. The Band will not judge you. They’re 80% Canadian – how could they judge you?
Besides, if the Band are guilty of any sort of “nostalgia,” theirs is a nostalgia with teeth. Would an album gazing into the American past with rose-tinted glasses contain this level of dread, sorrow, bitterness, and disappointment in its bones? Does an album with lyrics such as “Come to me now, you know we’re so alone/And life is brief,” “Just be careful what you do/It all comes back on you,” “Mowin’ that eternal plow,” “She walks these hills in a long black veil/She visits my grave when the night winds wail,” and “All day long I hear him shouting so loud/Just crying out that he was framed” conjure up images of a “better” America?
If Music from Big Pink serves as an escape, then, perhaps it serves as an escape into the fatalistic murk from which none of us can escape.