The Band

The Band were one of the most influential groups in the history of American rock, a five-piece that forged a sound out of the full sweep of the country's vernacular music traditions: country, gospel, blues, soul, old-time folk, and rhythm and blues. Though four of the five members were Canadian, their music felt rooted in the American South in ways that most American acts of their era could not match.

The group coalesced from the Hawks, the backing band of Canadian rockabilly singer Ronnie Hawkins, which the core members joined in the late 1950s and early 1960s. The lineup that would become The Band comprised guitarist and principal songwriter Robbie Robertson (born in Toronto), bassist Rick Danko, keyboardist Garth Hudson (both from Ontario), pianist Richard Manuel (from Stratford, Ontario), and drummer and vocalist Levon Helm, the sole American, from Turkey Scratch, Arkansas.^[1]

In 1965, Bob Dylan chose them as his touring electric band, placing them at the center of one of rock history's most contentious moments: Dylan's transition from acoustic folk to amplified rock. The 1966 world tour drew hostile audience reaction at nearly every stop from folk purists, and Helm quit partway through, exhausted by the abuse.^[1]

After Dylan's motorcycle accident in July 1966, the band regrouped in Woodstock, New York. Three members moved into a large pink farmhouse in West Saugerties they called Big Pink, and through 1967 they made informal recordings with Dylan in the basement. Those sessions, known as The Basement Tapes, were a deliberate retreat from psychedelic spectacle into the rootsy heart of American music. They shaped not only The Band's debut album but the direction of rock broadly.^[2]

Their debut, Music from Big Pink (1968), was produced by John Simon and recorded in approximately two weeks. It arrived into a rock landscape dominated by psychedelia and immediately began pulling that landscape in a different direction. Eric Clapton later said it convinced him to disband Cream. The Rolling Stones moved toward the earthy sound of Beggars Banquet. The album is now widely regarded as foundational to the entire Americana genre.^[2]

The group performed at Woodstock in August 1969 and released their celebrated self-titled second album that same year. Robertson's songwriting drew on an unusual set of influences, including the surrealist films of Luis Buñuel, whose recurring theme of the impossibility of sainthood shaped songs like "The Weight." Robertson also credited the Gotham Book Mart in New York City, a legendary literary shop run by Frances "Fanny" Steloff, as the place where he discovered Buñuel's film scripts and found a new approach to lyric writing.^[3]

The Band released several more albums through the 1970s before staging a farewell concert at Winterland Ballroom in San Francisco on Thanksgiving night, November 25, 1976. The concert, filmed by Martin Scorsese and released as The Last Waltz (1978), featured guest appearances by Dylan, Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, Van Morrison, Muddy Waters, and others. It remains one of the most celebrated concert films ever made.^[1]