Word: levon
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...makings for a new live album, and 5,000 fans of first-class countrified rock had had one final look at The Band. After 16 years, some of them spent as Bob Dylan's back-up group, Guitarist Robbie Robertson, Bassist Rick Danko, Organist Garth Hudson. Drummer Levon Helm and Pianist Richard Manuel had come to San Francisco's Winterland for their final live performance together...
Dylan, in traction for six months, staring at the ceiling of his hospital room, must have wrestled with quite a few personal devils. When he had recuperated, he got together with his friends Garth Hudson, Levon Helm, Richard Manuel, Robbie Robertson and Rick Danko, and headed down to the basement of their Big Pink home in Wood-stock, N.Y. where the tracks for The Basement Tapes were laid down...
That the audience loved his music is easy to explain. The Band, probably the most talented American rock group, again proved its discipline, energy, and versatility. The group's lead and bass guitar playing, the keyboard work, and particularly the singing of Levon Helm were outstanding. In the evening concert, Dylan fit in easily with the group, coordinating his rhythm guitar with the Band better as the performance progressed. During their two solo sets, The Band played mostly old songs. "I Shall Be Released," which Dylan wrote, and Robbie Robertson's "The Weight" and "The Night They Drove Ol' Dixie...
...embarrasses The Band to have one member singled out over the others. Yet at one time or another it is hard not to pay particular attention to Garth Hudson's organ breaks as well as his fine horn playing, Richard Manuel's smooth piano and plaintive vocals, Levon Helm's drumming and his raunchy vocals, Rick Danko's intense bass guitar and Robbie's kinetic lead. Together they form a group that remains unique in a highly imitative field...
...last note of "Slippin" and Slidin it was as though The Band derived a peculiar pleasure from the very act of being on stage, playing their music. There was Richard Manuel, head turned away from the piano, eyes closed, his melodic voice drifting into the microphone. There was Levon Helm on drums, delivering the amazingly steady, but unobtrusive, beat that drives The Band. His eyes, too. were closed his head turned to the microphone. There was Rick Danko playing his archaic Fender Precision bass. But, oh, how he played it. And his voice, so important to The Band's sound...