Why do the best things always disappear?
Levon Helm - musician, actor, dirt farmer - has ceased his ramblin' at the age of seventy-one. As the drummer and then some of The Band, he was an Arkansan amongst Canadians, his southern drawl snaking through a thick tangle of tenor harmony with Richard Manuel and Rick Danko. As an actor, he was essential to the greatness of Philip Kaufman's THE RIGHT STUFF as both the folksy narrator and Chuck Yeager's Beemans supplier, Jack Ridley. And when cancer was fool enough to fuck with his voice, his friends rallied around him, touring, recording and romping up in Woodstock, New York as part of his Midnight Rambles.
Helm's career kicked off in 1958 when rockabilly hellraiser Ronnie Hawkins brought him on to drum for his backing band, The Hawks. A few years later, Hawkins and Helm set up shop in Toronto, where they re-formed the Hawks to include a group of young, versatile Canadian musicians: Robbie Robertson, Rick Danko, Richard Manuel and Garth Hudson. Their raucous sound - an unruly amalgamation of everything from rhythm-and-blues to country - turned out to be just what the newly "electric" Bob Dylan was looking for, and so in 1965 The Hawks joined the folk icon for one of the most important tours in the history of American popular music. Helm, however, found the contentious reception to Dylan's "Judas" turn unsettling, so he took a sabbatical from the The Hawks until 1967, when Robertson summoned their Arkansan secret weapon up to Woodstock to write and record the band's first album.
The Band's MUSIC FROM BIG PINK was released on July 1st, 1968 at a tumultuous moment in the nation's history: Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy were dead, the first two phases of the Tet Offensive had wiped out thousands of American infantrymen, and the Democratic National Convention in Chicago was a little over a month away. Protest music was spilling out of bedrooms and dorms throughout the country. But if you happened to be living in a counterculture hotbed like Berkeley, California at the time (as my parents were), that fractious summer was likely defined by the decidedly non-confrontational "The Weight," the last song on the first side of MUSIC FROM BIG PINK. And the first voice you hear on that song is Helm's weary-but-amiable southern tenor - that easy, ear-pleasing drawl offering temporary shelter from the raging storm of war and assassination. It's no surprise "The Weight" found its way onto the soundtrack of Dennis Hopper's counterculture classic EASY RIDER the following year.
1969 was also a watershed year, creatively at least, for The Band, as they released their self-titled second LP (also known as THE BROWN ALBUM). This was easily Helm's finest hour. Not only does he sing lead vocals on two of the best songs on the LP, "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down" and "Up On Cripple Creek", he also steps out from behind the drum kit to play mandolin on "Rag Mama Rag" and rhythm guitar on "Jemima Surrender". And then there are his upper-register-straining backing vocals on "Whispering Pines" and my all-time favorite Band song "Look Out Cleveland".
Though they continued to record well into the 1970s, studio-wise The Band hit their artistic peak with THE BAND. Sure, 1973's MOONDOG MATINEE was a fun collection of covers (with Helm doing Clarence "Frogman" Henry justice on "Ain't Got No Song"), but the other LPs couldn't match the brilliance of their first two efforts (the downright awful ISLANDS was recorded primarily to get out of their Capitol contract). After THE LAST WALTZ, everyone went their separate ways for a while. Helm embarked on a solo career in the late '70s, and began acting with 1980s COAL MINER'S DAUGHTER. Three years later, his opening narration for Philip Kaufman's THE RIGHT STUFF struck an irreverently patriotic tone that almost singlehandedly allowed the film to work as an apolitical celebration of America's cowboy yearning turned skyward. There are eight moments in THE RIGHT STUFF that bring me to tears, and Helm - as narrator or Jack Ridley - is involved in four of them.
A rare voice of calm in the '60s, an even rarer voice of daring in the chicken-shit '80s, and, finally, a defiant voice that would not be silenced by cancer. I've been listening to Helm and The Band all day, and I keep smiling through my tears, realizing the best things never truly disappear. As we barrel headfirst into what promises to be an depressingly nasty election year, I've a feeling Helm and his departed brothers, Manuel and Danko, are going to be filling up my living room with the promise of a less discordant day. I see my light come shining...
Faithfully submitted,
