Testimony

by Robbie Robertson

  Just before we had started our recording sessions, Albert had arranged for the Hawks to meet with attorney David Braun to handle our contract with Capitol Records. We were unproven at this point, so there were no heavy negotiations going on. We also met with Marshall Gelfand, an accountant whom Albert recommended. Marshall said he would handle our U.S. taxes for free, and if we became successful, we would go with his accounting firm. I liked Marshall and appreciated his gesture.

  Garth had brought a few of the basement tapes into the city with us, just in case we needed to refer to any songs we might record. Strong consideration was still going on for “I Shall Be Released.”

  “Oh, here’s one I think we should do,” Garth said. He cued up “I’m Your Teenage Prayer,” a terrifically funny track from the basement tapes. Bob’s vocal performance was classic.

  John Simon said, “I love those background vocals. Who’s doing that answer vocal to Bob? ‘Come over here, baby’?”

  Rick pointed at me. “It’s our secret lead singer, Robbie.

  “It’s me doing the harmony and Rich doing the high part,” Rick explained. “We did this before Lee came back.”

  “It’s still one of my favorites,” said Garth.

  “Speaking of that, why don’t we cut the song Robbie sings, ‘To Kingdom Come’?” asked Levon. “That’s what it’s called, right, Duke?”

  “Yeah, we need some guitar solos too,” said Richard. “I’d like to do that one next.” This song was more experimental to me, and I was still sorting it out, so I pleaded to hold off cutting that one. The guys insisted, so I plugged in Garth’s black box and turned off the fan/Leslie effect and switched on my tremolo to see what it sounded like for the guitar solos.

  “It sounds good in here,” John said from the control room. “Let’s go with it.” Levon coached me through the vocal, when to hit it harder and when to pull back, and we laid it down in just a couple of takes.

  I had a picture in my mind of what our musical group was, and the way “To Kingdom Come” shook out in the recording process was a little off-course for me. I wanted to stay away from an unbalanced form in our group. We had a special democratic arrangement among the five of us, and if I wrote the song, sang the song, arranged it, and played the solos, in my mind, that’s not who we were. “Okay,” I told myself, “we’ll balance it out in other ways.”

  —

  Again the record company and management asked what the name of our group would be, and again we had trouble taking the question seriously. We laughed about calling ourselves “The Royal Canadians Except for Levon.” Albert liked the idea of our not having a name. “Let them try and deal with that.”

  Richard liked “The Honkies” but knew nobody would go for it. He joked, “If we want to be up on the scene with today’s kind of group names, we could go with ‘The Marshmallow Overcoats’ or ‘The Chocolate Subway.’ Levon related to being called “The Crackers” and no one vehemently disagreed, although we didn’t know if they had true “crackers” in Canada. The record company thought that was a nice name, at first. They thought we meant soda crackers, Ritz, or honey ginger—not uneducated, country, bigoted, southern white trash.

  Back in the studio, I was enjoying Rick’s vocal on “Caledonia Mission.” The texture of his voice sounded so honest, so natural. He was by far the best harmony singer in the group, which was extremely evident on the basement tapes.

  We finished up our sessions at A&R Studios and returned to Woodstock. Winter had kicked in with full force in the Catskills, and we made steady calls to the Shultis family, the go-to people around there for firewood and snowplowing. When the long driveway and Pine Road leading to Big Pink got snowed in and kept us from getting anywhere, we faced a serious setback. With our limited recording budget, we had to figure out phase two of making the album. We had cut seven songs and had about five more contenders. There was a clause in our deal with Capitol that said if we used their studios at the Capitol Records Tower in LA, we could record free of charge. It would just be a matter of paying for travel and housing.

  It was now so cold and snowy in Woodstock that I pushed to make the LA option work, and the boys and John Simon were more than sympathetic. John said he hoped that Capitol Studios could hold up to the sound we were getting at A&R. I pointed out that Bobbie Gentry’s song “Ode to Billie Joe” had been recorded there, and it had a certain quality, a big sound and an earthiness at the same time.

  “True,” John said, “but Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys and Phil Spector use Gold Star Studios, not Capitol.” He had a point. Some of the greatest Nat King Cole and Frank Sinatra recordings had been cut at Capitol Studios (famous for its underground echo chambers), but that was yesterday. This was early 1968, and maybe things had changed. While we were figuring this out, Bob came by my house in Woodstock one morning for one of our ritual coffees. He said there was a Woody Guthrie tribute coming up at Carnegie Hall, and he had agreed to perform three songs.

  “That’ll be terrific,” I told him, “and they’ll love you returning to an acoustic folk style for the event.”

  “No, I want to do it with you and the guys,” Bob said. “You think they’ll be into it?”

  “I’ll run it by the boys, but I’m sure they’ll be up for it.”

  We were scheduled to go out to LA and start recording in about three weeks. That gave us time to run over some Woody Guthrie tunes with Bob and start to figure out what we would cut when we headed west.

  When we got to Carnegie Hall and started to set up our instruments, you could see a worried look on the face of the concert producer, Harold Leventhal, a prominent folk-music manager. I suppose he was hoping we would leave the “electronics” behind this time. But what could anybody say? What could they do? Bob was going to do it his way, and that was that.

  The Woody Guthrie tribute had the aura of a serious folk-music summit. I felt like a bit of an intruder in this setting. But the responsibility for inviting us along fell on Bob’s shoulders, and I was ready to get in the trenches with him anywhere after all we’d been through.

  Perhaps because we’d recently recorded in a mellower vein, not to mention the lingering effects of the basement-tapes vibe, we played those Woody Guthrie songs more subtly than we’d played Bob’s songs on the tour. We took the stage with a rousing version of “I Ain’t Got No Home,” then did “Grand Coulee Dam” with a bit of a Muscle Shoals lilt. The audience and other folk artists on the show—Pete Seeger, Judy Collins, Odetta—watched us with trepidation in the beginning, but no one could resist Bob’s passion for the songs. “Dear Mrs. Roosevelt” definitely won them over, such a pure Guthrie plea. The boys and I ended up enjoying the experience, even if we were venturing a little over the tracks. There’s something dirty about rock ’n’ roll and blues, and here at this Carnegie Hall folk tribute, things seemed pretty clean—even if they were dusty.

  Back in Woodstock, Bob gave me a painting he had done of an American Indian looking straight ahead, while in the background an Indian woman, maybe his woman, rides away on the back of a horse with a cowboy. It was a rectangular canvas, and I liked how it hinted at a story. Without going into too much detail, I told Bob that the recording with the guys was going well and that we had some surprises for him. I mentioned that our name, “The Hawks,” had come under fire, and we needed to come up with a new moniker. I said that our affiliation with him had made such an imprint, and if he had any ideas how we could solve this, to please enlighten us. Oh, and also, if he felt inspired to do a painting for our album cover, that would be good too.

  We packed up and ventured west to the warmer climes of LA, moving into the infamous Castle in Los Feliz, where I had stayed with Bob before. From there we could aim straight for our hookup at the impressive Capitol Records Tower recording facilities. By now we felt that musically we were onto something, and we hoped to impress the Capitol staff and make them believers. Capitol had assigned A&R man John Palladino to help us get our recording schedule set up. There was a lot
of variation among A&R men: some were very controlling, and others knew when to get out of the way. Thankfully, John Palladino was easygoing and didn’t want to interfere. He let us do our own thing.

  Union engineers worked the studios at Capitol, and the “union rules” meant John Simon wasn’t allowed to so much as touch the mixing board or any of the equipment. An engineer named Rex Uptegraft was delegated to work with us in studio B. To get him familiar with our music, our sound, John Simon played him the songs we had recorded in New York. He listened, partially interested. After the playback all he had to say was “That’s darn cute.” It looked like this could be a tough one.

  We showed Rex how we wanted to set up in the studio, and he went along with it, no particular skin off his ass. John tried to educate him on our process as best he could, without being able to touch anything.

  I had a certain approach in mind for the great Lefty Frizzell record “Long Black Veil,” more of an R&B treatment with a Wurlitzer electric piano and the drums playing in half time. I taught it to Rick, who was familiar with the tune from way back. We had come into a time where too many musicians thought they were songwriters, and the idea of doing one classic song that we could put a new spin on appealed to me out of pure respect for actual songsmiths. I thought we could try out “Long Black Veil” at Capitol Studios to see if we could find a groove with Rex “Darn Cute” Updegraft.

  I showed Levon how I wanted to approach the song beatwise, and soon it started to come together. Rick sounded so authentic singing this song and telling the story. The studio didn’t have all the mics John wanted, and it took a lot of trial and error before he gave us a thumbs-up. The sound here wasn’t as vivid and shimmering as at A&R, but once we found our zone, magic started to flow. We got a take on “Long Black Veil,” and I told John it might be worth considering our Salvation Army horn vibe on this song, just to go completely against the grain. Garth and John thought this could work and started messing around with a little horn part. I always enjoyed mixing musical worlds together and reinventing a song through experimentation.

  When we recorded Richard’s song “Lonesome Suzie,” John was concerned that we had a lot of slow songs, and he suggested we try a more up-tempo shuffle version of the tune. We did, with John and Garth adding some horns to the track. But as we listened to the slow version and then the more up-tempo approach back to back, two things became very clear to me: the faster arrangement wasn’t lonesome, and I wasn’t concerned about the balance between slow songs and fast songs.

  —

  Albert and Sally came out to Los Angeles while we were recording, and one night the two of them, Dominique, and I went to the Shrine Auditorium to see the Jimi Hendrix Experience. Backstage, Albert greeted Mo Ostin, the president of Warner Bros. Records, whom I’d met briefly once when he came to Woodstock. You could tell in two seconds what a terrific gentleman he was. I told Mo we were finishing up our album at Capitol Studios. “You know,” he said, smiling, “I started Reprise Records with Sinatra and that’s where Frank recorded most of his best work.” Mo and Albert were friends and had worked together for years. Mo was quick to point out that he was extremely disappointed with Albert for signing us to Capitol while he was out of town. “Just unfortunate timing,” Albert said apologetically. We went out to catch Jimi’s set, but we were positioned right in front of the PA; after a few fantastic songs our ears were bleeding. “I think we better go,” said Albert. We all agreed, but I was sorry not to get a chance to say hello to my old guitar buddy, Jimmy James.

  The work was getting done at Capitol Studios, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was lacking. Just for the sake of contrast, John booked us a few hours at Gold Star Studios so we didn’t feel so rigid and “unionized.” We wanted to inject a little more looseness to keep things fresh. At Gold Star we completely switched musical gears and let go of the line, cutting a swampy version of “Yazoo Street Scandal.” Some instrument switching too, with Richard taking over on drums and Levon grabbing his mandolin. That turned everything upside down.

  Then Richard sang “Baby Lou,” a tune we’d heard by a pretty obscure artist named Jimmy Drew. It had a Mose Allison flavor to it, which we dug. When we recorded “Long Distance Operator,” it felt like a contender for the album. For the hell of it, we did a version of the bluegrass classic “If I Lose.” Again Levon got out his beautiful Gibson mandolin, and Richard gave the track his clippity-clop drum style. We didn’t labor over these recordings at Gold Star. This session was more of a party for the soul.

  Back at Capitol Studios, we rounded things off with Rick singing “This Wheel’s on Fire,” the song he had written with Bob. Garth played some very unusual-sounding clavinet keyboard parts. Rick sang it how he felt it and we jumped on board and followed his lead. The arrangement was completely different from the way we did it in the basement with Bob—more of a drive and less of a lament.

  With “I Shall Be Released” we brought this musical adventure to a conclusion. Richard gave it his heartbreaking falsetto, and I thought the harmonies on the chorus sounded unlike anybody else. I got so caught up recording this track that I wandered off for a moment rhythmically, and John Simon caught me on that. He also had Levon play something on the snares with his fingers for a backbeat. Levon wasn’t too comfortable with this, but it sounded good, so he went along for the ride.

  We had a tape recorder and some speakers set up in the big living room at the Castle. The room had a sweet reverb, which made the music sound like it had been around forever. When friends dropped by and we played a few unmixed songs from our sessions, some of them had a bit of a bewildered look on their faces—almost as if they found our music too distant.

  Our old drummer friend Sandy Konikoff was in LA and stopped by for a visit. He seemed to have gotten over his rough experience with Bob and the Hawks, but he did say that playing on that tour was probably the most uncomfortable, devastating time of his life. We could laugh about it now, though, and that we did, after smoking a little weed. Sally and Dominique said we should play a few of our tracks for Sandy, so I threaded up a tape on the machine and turned up the volume. Sandy closed his eyes and sank into the music. I thought, Look at that, he’s spellbound. After the tape ended, he opened his eyes and said, “Can I hear that again? I don’t know what I just heard. It sounds beautiful, but I don’t know what it is. Sorry, don’t get me wrong, I think it’s good, but I’m not sure I get it.”

  Oh, god, I thought, maybe this music is too “inside,” too much of its own thing. There was a certain taste the five members of our group shared that explained why in the beginning we had been drawn to southern blues or sacred harp singing—we wanted to avoid the obvious, to reach out for rare musical gems. The less known some music was, the more appealing it could be to us. But had we pulled too far in that direction? I hoped we weren’t making music that hollered out too severely against commercialism.

  As Richard played the tape back again for Sandy, I left the room. When the music stopped, I went back in. Sandy came over to me, put his hand on my shoulder, and said, “I’m a damn fool. That’s some of the best music I’ve ever heard. It just caught me so off guard the first time because I thought I knew what it would sound like. Man, was I wrong.” I felt a sense of relief; I was so close to the music, I had no idea how it sounded to new ears.

  John Simon and I were eager to get the songs we’d chosen for the record mixed, sequenced, and ready for presentation. It was kind of extraordinary how few people had heard what we were doing up to this point. Even Albert hadn’t really listened. Dominique and Sally were actually the only people who had been through this recording process with us from beginning to end.

  After the mixes were done at A&R in New York, we made an acetate for Albert. I very much wanted the powerful manager Albert Grossman to be proud of our efforts. The look on his face as he listened to it—I thought he was going to chew his nails to the bone, but there was pure glee in his eyes after each track. Everybody who came through h
is office or home for the next three months had to endure Albert playing some of our tracks. He liked making people guess who they were listening to.

  We had a little listening session at Albert’s house in Bearsville. Bob came over with Sara, and Al Aronowitz joined too. After some gourmet snacks, Albert put the acetate on for Bob, who was hearing it for the first time; we had all been busy and had wanted to finish the album before we shared it with him. “Tears of Rage” started the record, and as it played Bob looked at me like he barely recognized me. At the end of the song, he yelled out, “That was incredible, Richard!” Richard acted a little bit shy but thrilled. After each song, Bob looked at “his” band with proud eyes. When “The Weight” came on, he said, “This is fantastic. Who wrote that song?”

  “Me,” I answered.

  He shook his head, slapped me on the arm, and said, “Damn! You wrote that song?” What a joy it was to push Bob’s button.

  At the end of “I Shall Be Released”—one of the most beautiful tunes Bob had written during our time in the basement—he stood up and said, “That was so good. You did it, man, you did it.” Coming from a dear friend, one of the greatest songwriters ever, and our fearless leader, Bob’s enthusiasm and words meant the world to the boys and me.

  It was right around this time that Dominique and I started talking about getting married—or at least Dominique talked about it. I was twenty-four and truly didn’t know if I had the wherewithal for getting hitched, especially since we were just launching into our new musical voyage—concerts, touring, writing, recording, serious road work up ahead. But I loved Dominique completely, and that’s all I knew. If that made her happy and settled things for her family, then it felt like the right thing to do. So we set a date: March 24, 1968.