In the terrible year of 1968, with war raging in Vietnam, with MLK and RFK being assassinated, a sound emerged from a funky pink house in the Catskill mountains that some of us had been awaiting, whether we knew it or not. “It’s like you’d never heard them before and like they’d always been there,” Bruce Springsteen would say, several decades later. This is true. I can attest to the feeling of desperation in the late ‘60s, and how it was tempered by the music from five troubadours – one from Arkansas and four from Canada. (Toronto was a melting pot for music that would be heard around the world.) The five musicians brought their separate gifts, in a visual mishmash of floppy country thrift-shop clothes, indistinguishable in their very white slouches. But gradually we sorted out Richard Manuel from Rick Danko from Levon Helm – the token southerner -- from Garth Hudson – now the last survivor, with his weird beard and instrumental sounds – and from Robbie Robertson, who died Aug. 9 at the age of 80. Robertson’s life is captured in the excellent NY Times obituary by Jim Farber: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/09/arts/music/robbie-robertson-dead.html Robertson came off as the dominant Band member in the documentary, “The Last Waltz,” by Martin Scorsese, which was made as the Band broke up, with a glorious final concert cast, in San Francisco's Winterland Ballroom on Nov. 25, 1976. Scorsese was obviously taken by Robbie Robertson’s charisma and intelligence and ambition, which helps explain why the boys were breaking up the band. When the movie was released in 1978, Marianne and I took our youngest, David, to see it in The Village (Dave clarifies all in his comment, below) -- the start of a family tradition. Every year at Thanksgiving, David pops in a DVD of “The Last Waltz,” as we give thanks for life and also the music and point of view of the Band, including Jaime Royal "Robbie" Robertson. I had a few glimpses of The Band. In 1974, as a news reporter, I was assigned to cover the Long Island and Manhattan stops of a national tour by Bob Dylan, and the five musicians who had melded as members of Dylan’s band. The only Band member I actually met was Levon Helm, when he was cast by Michael Apted to portray Loretta Lynn’s father in the movie, “Coal Miner’s Daughter.” Another time, I saw Danko and a haggard Manuel perform at a Pete Fornatale fund-raiser for a food charity, in the Village, not long before Manuel committed suicide. In 1980, there was a “grand opening” for the movie “Coal Miner’s Daughter” in Nashville. Maybe a bit sloshed, Levon played backup to Loretta and Sissy Spacek as they sang some of Loretta’s greatest hits. He was so modest, did not need attention. I never did meet or eyeball Robbie Robertson, but his mystique grew in his post-Band years. People came to know that his mother, Rosemary Dolly Chrysler, was a Mohawk, raised on the Six Nations Reserve near Toronto. His actual father (who died young in a car accident) was not named Robertson but rather was a gambler who was Jewish. “You could say I’m an expert when it comes to persecution,” Robbie Robertson wrote in his memoir, “Testimony,” issued in 2016. One of my favorite Robbie Robertson songs is “Stage Fright,” about a singer – maybe Bob Dylan himself, who comes off very nicely in Robertson’s book, offering a functional car to the young guitarist coming to play backup in Dylan’s band. https://www.google.com/search?q=lyrics+stage+fright+the+band&rlz=1C1GTPM_enUS1061US1062&oq=lyrics+stage+fright&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUqBwgAEAAYgAQyBwgAEAAYgAQyBggBEEUYOTIICAIQABgWGB4yCggDEAAYhgMYigUyBggEEEUYPNIBDzEzMDU5MzU3NTRqMGoxNagCALACAA&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8 Others think the song is about young Robbie Robertson himself. Still coalescing as a band, the five musicians made a pilgrimage to a soul-music center in Arkansas, and invited Sonny Boy Williamson for some soul-food in a Black neighborhood. Home-boy Levon tried speaking polite Arkansan to a couple of white cops, only to have the five run out of town. Another of my favorite Robbie songs is “Acadian Driftwood,” about French settlers on the Canadian coast, some of whom later migrated southward to join relatives in Louisiana, only to realize they were still outsiders: “Set my compass north, I’ve got winter in my blood.” As the settler prepares to go “home” to Canada, the language shifts into French: “Sais tu, Acadie j'ai le mal du pays” (Do you know, Acadia, I'm homesick.) In later decades, Robertson performed and wrote music that reflected his Mohawk genes: https://www.samaritanmag.com/musicians/qa-robbie-robertson-why-he-kept-quiet-years-about-his-heritage In his later years, Robertson gravitated to Los Angeles, but he continued to write and perform songs that spoke for outsiders, including himself -- part shtetl, part rez. ###
Michael M Beer
8/10/2023 03:28:11 pm
Thanks George. Stage Fright and Acadian Driftwood are two great examples. I also love King Harvest for its historical tale of the worker. I was at the 3 Before The Flood shows at MSG in Jan '74 (I was 17). It was great. I understood there was some bad blood between Robertson and Helm. Oh well. R.I.P. Robbie Robertson. Michael P.S. "Been out ice fishin', too much repition...
GV
8/10/2023 09:16:13 pm
Michael: I covered 2 at the Nassau Coliseum and 2 at MSG but skipped the final.
Jean
8/10/2023 03:41:48 pm
Just one example of major expulsions of those who failed to conform to the likes of the haves . L had not heard their music but it tells the longing to reclaim that which was taken ! Lost ! But not forgotten
Randolph
8/10/2023 03:59:52 pm
George,
Altenir Silva
8/10/2023 04:03:05 pm
Dear George,
GV
8/10/2023 09:18:36 pm
Very advanced tastes for the young man..GV
Tad Myre
8/10/2023 04:16:36 pm
George, what a nice tribute to Robertson. The Last Waltz catapulted him from a scruffy band member of a scruffy band into a matinee idol and a very short-lived acting career- the whole band cleaned up for the show. Word has it that he just finished another Scorsese score before his death and it wasn't that long ago he was leading off the fabulous "Playing for Change" youtube video of The Weight. His staccato riffs on Dylan's Planet Waves, his solo albums, the Basement Tapes and then more Basement Tapes, his love of Americana distilled each song in just a few lines. By a Canadian, no less, looking down from the north. A lot of tragedy in that group. Suicide, early death from drugs, cancer and strife, but when they came together they were perfect. In Fallen Angel, his tribute to Manuel, he sang these lines in that husky voice:
GV
8/10/2023 09:20:03 pm
They went hard...GV
Darrell Berger
8/10/2023 05:08:20 pm
Nicely done. The beginning Bruce quote is so on the money. They invented Americana decades before it got its name. I still play and sing their songs all the time. They were such a blend of "in the living room" or "at the barn dance" plus "back Dylan and play the Garden."
Dave
8/10/2023 05:27:17 pm
Not just took me to see it, but took me to see it at Bleecker Street Cinema. From the opening frame ("This Film Should Be Played Loud") to handsome Robbie and lovable Rick, tragic Richard to snarling and smiling Levon to Honey Boy Garth, it was love at first sight. The Band's music is the greatest gift you ever gave me!
GV
8/10/2023 09:25:36 pm
Dave, I had forgotten it was the Bleecker St. Cinema.
Andy Tansey
8/14/2023 10:14:49 am
I was at that Coliseum Dead show. I was the one with the pony tail wearing a tie-dye. (Did Branford sit in then?)
GV
8/10/2023 09:26:13 pm
Yo, Tom...GV
bruce
8/10/2023 08:18:01 pm
george,
GV
8/10/2023 09:32:22 pm
They went hard....takes a toll.
bruce
8/10/2023 10:02:51 pm
vescey san,
Diane Tuman
8/11/2023 09:06:09 am
Most families watch the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade or football games while gathering for the holiday. The Vecsey family watches "The Last Waltz," a tradition I have come to love and appreciate for its music, obviously, but also the insight of each band member shared by Dave and George. Of course, I was always taken by Robbie who is "the cute one" out front. Much like Loretta Lynn passing late last year, I knew this would hit my partner's family hard as well. Let's pop that DVD in next visit and not wait until Thanksgiving. 8/14/2023 06:13:29 pm
Great stuff, George. And I'm going to claim, with Acadian Driftwood, that it is sort of about my peeps: About seven generations back, my ancestors were transplanted French in Acadia and somewhere along the way got to Louisiana, during the Great Expulsion, where they became "Cajuns," home of my parents. Not long ago Donna and I went to Acadia National Park. Great adventure. 9/8/2023 04:39:39 am
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Measuring Covid Deaths, by David Leonhardt. July 17, 2023. NYT online. The United States has reached a milestone in the long struggle against Covid: The total number of Americans dying each day — from any cause — is no longer historically abnormal…. After three horrific years, in which Covid has killed more than one million Americans and transformed parts of daily life, the virus has turned into an ordinary illness. The progress stems mostly from three factors: First, about three-quarters of U.S. adults have received at least one vaccine shot. Second, more than three-quarters of Americans have been infected with Covid, providing natural immunity from future symptoms. (About 97 percent of adults fall into at least one of those first two categories.) Third, post-infection treatments like Paxlovid, which can reduce the severity of symptoms, became widely available last year. “Nearly every death is preventable,” Dr. Ashish Jha, who was until recently President Biden’s top Covid adviser, told me. “We are at a point where almost everybody who’s up to date on their vaccines and gets treated if they have Covid, they rarely end up in the hospital, they almost never die.” That is also true for most high-risk people, Jha pointed out, including older adults — like his parents, who are in their 80s — and people whose immune systems are compromised. “Even for most — not all but most —immuno-compromised people, vaccines are actually still quite effective at preventing against serious illness,” he said. “There has been a lot of bad information out there that somehow if you’re immuno-compromised that vaccines don’t work.” That excess deaths have fallen close to zero helps make this point: If Covid were still a dire threat to large numbers of people, that would show up in the data. One point of confusion, I think, has been the way that many Americans — including we in the media — have talked about the immuno-compromised. They are a more diverse group than casual discussion often imagines. Most immuno-compromised people are at little additional risk from Covid — even people with serious conditions, such as multiple sclerosis or a history of many cancers. A much smaller group, such as people who have received kidney transplants or are undergoing active chemotherapy, face higher risks. Covid’s toll, to be clear, has not fallen to zero. The C.D.C.’s main Covid webpage estimates that about 80 people per day have been dying from the virus in recent weeks, which is equal to about 1 percent of overall daily deaths. The official number is probably an exaggeration because it includes some people who had virus when they died even though it was not the underlying cause of death. Other C.D.C. data suggests that almost one-third of official recent Covid deaths have fallen into this category. A study published in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases came to similar conclusions. Dr. Shira Doron, the chief infection control officer at Tufts Medicine in Massachusetts, told me that “age is clearly the most substantial risk factor.” Covid’s victims are both older and disproportionately unvaccinated. Given the politics of vaccination, the recent victims are also disproportionately Republican and white. Each of these deaths is a tragedy. The deaths that were preventable — because somebody had not received available vaccines and treatments — seem particularly tragic. (Here’s a Times guide to help you think about when to get your next booster shot.) *** From the great Maureen Dowd: As I write this, I’m in a deserted newsroom in The Times’s D.C. office. After working at home for two years during Covid, I was elated to get back, so I could wander around and pick up the latest scoop. But in the last year, there has been only a smattering of people whenever I’m here, with row upon row of empty desks. Sometimes a larger group gets lured in for a meeting with a platter of bagels." --- Dowd writes about the lost world of journalists clustered in newsrooms at all hours, smoking, drinking, gossipping, making phone calls, typing, editing. *** "Putting out the paper," we called it. Much more than nostalgia. ---https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/29/opinion/journalism-newsroom.html Categories
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