Testimony

by Robbie Robertson

  When I told the guys and Bob, nobody seemed that surprised or averse to the idea. Marriage looked good on the Dylans. Bob and Sara gave the impression in their relationship that a special contentment lived there. They were a few years older than Dominique and me, but their bond gave us something to aspire to—a certain rounded maturity.

  Nobody else in our immediate circle had gotten married except for Levon when he had married Connie to avoid the draft, and good thing for that, because the war had heated up to a horrible bloodbath. There was a sick feeling in the souls of young people around North America and the world. From our little musical bubble in the Catskill Mountains, the view was devastating in terms of how many young men were coming back from this painful, pointless war in body bags or doomed to become homeless drug casualties. It was heartbreaking; you couldn’t help but want to do whatever you could to stop this nightmare. Marches and be-ins or sit-ins had become stronger and more vital in the antiwar movement. Something big was stirring, and you could feel it all around.

  Albert and Sally came back from a trip to the West Coast and said the vibe and the force of young people in San Francisco was unlike anything the world had ever seen before. The streets and the parks were lined with people from all over, sharing a voice, sharing food, sharing music, and the swell was growing larger every day. The revolution was on, and there was no turning back. Albert spoke of a vigilante group in San Francisco that robbed food distributors and vendors and fed runaway street kids or anybody who was hungry. He smiled broadly at this, like it was the return of Robin Hood. “The group is called the Diggers,” he said, “and I’ve invited the head guy, Emmett Grogan, to come to Woodstock. I like him. I like what he’s doing.”

  Meanwhile, Bob’s station wagon was on its last legs, and with a little money coming in from our record-company advances, I was able to buy a copper-colored ’67 Mustang convertible with a monster engine. I’d never seen one like this before, with a folding glass rear window. Fantastic ride.

  One morning while I was running some errands in Woodstock at the hardware store, I overheard a couple saying, “That guy there is with the band. You know, they play with Bob Dylan and stuff.” When I stopped into the Woodstock Bakery in Bearsville, where a grumpy old German woman and her husband made exquisite croissants and pastries, a patron in the shop referred to me as being in “the band.” There weren’t other bands around town at that time, so we got used to hearing ourselves described like this—on evenings when the boys and I were having a bite at Deanie’s, the main restaurant in town, folks would stop by our table and ask, “You making any good music these days?”

  We’d usually answer, “We’re trying. Got an album coming out soon.”

  They’d walk away saying, “That’s the band. They live up here.”

  I said to Rick, sitting across the table from me, “Everybody around here calls us ‘the Band.’ ”

  “That’s what everybody’s been calling us for nearly two years now,” said Richard.

  Rick laughed, “We are ‘the Band,’ simple as that. All those other silly names bug me. I don’t even like thinking about it.”

  I passed the idea on to Albert. He thought it was perfect, almost like having no name at all.

  One thing we did know for sure: we were a real band. Everybody played a major role in our balance of musicianship. We weren’t a group with a cute lead singer who liked to take his shirt off, and his guitar man, who also liked being shirtless on occasion. In many bands the other players in the group remained in the shadows; they knew who the stars were. There was nothing wrong with that, but we were holding a different hand—like five-card stud. Nothing wild. Everything faceup.

  When it came time to take some photos for our album artwork, we were getting all kinds of suggestions. “Why don’t you get Irving Penn or Richard Avedon?” Or this guy from Paris, or that guy from London. Everybody at the record company and at Albert’s office had an opinion on who was the best and who was the very best in New York. I felt crowded by all this talk. “Who’s the worst?” I asked. “Who would be considered the worst photographer in New York City?” That shut everybody up for a moment, but to my surprise, they started coming back with suggestions as to who might actually be the worst. I certainly hadn’t been serious about it, but now my curiosity was sparked. Information came in that there was an underground paper in New York called Rat that used a photographer named Elliott Landy. People said the pictures in Rat looked kind of fuzzy and were cropped funny. That, of course, could be the paper’s fault and not the photographer’s, but perhaps there was a chance he could be our man.

  Albert got a kick out of the idea that I was pursuing the worst photographer we could find. I told him we had a contender and his name was Elliott Landy. “Oh, I know him,” Albert responded. “He’s a pain in the ass, but he can take good pictures.”

  Relieved, I said, “Good, let’s book him.”

  First we wanted him to come up to Rick’s family’s farm outside Simcoe, Ontario, to take a picture for the album with our parents and relatives that we called Next of Kin. During this period there was a lot of negativity toward parents going around. That wasn’t our story, so we rebelled against the notion and said it loud. Elliott Landy took a wonderful shot of us with the folks and in the process became a trusted member of our gang. He was a kind and gentle soul, with bushy hair, a keen eye, and a warm smile. As we had with John Simon, we invited him into our world with open arms.

  By nature the five of us were extremely private, and Levon especially didn’t like having pictures taken. Elliott skillfully navigated those boundaries and made himself almost invisible. He hung out with us at Big Pink, and I liked looking through old photo books from the turn of the century with him. The rawness of that photography somehow connected with the music we were making.

  Elliott took a classic shot of us with Overlook Mountain in the background. The way we were dressed and looked in that photo was pretty much the same as how we looked every day. Maybe we had a touch more “Sunday go to meetin’ ” style happening. Garth wore a string tie for the occasion, but that was about it. We put on our jackets and hats for the shot, but Elliott didn’t want us to change a thing.

  Then one morning Bob swung by, surprising me with a painting he had done for the Band’s album cover. He propped it up, and as we looked at it we both started laughing, especially at the Indian in the back playing a stand-up bass with cutaways. The piano man hanging over the top of the upright reminded me of a character straight out of the basement tapes. And of course you have to have an elephant in there, right? “It’s perfect!” I said, going over to the window to hold it up to the light. “You know, I’ve never seen anything like this for an album cover before.”

  “Oh good,” Bob said, nodding.

  “I wonder what the—”

  “Okay, I gotta go, see you later.” And he was gone.

  Albert arranged for me to meet with his favorite album designer, Milt Glaser. He had a house in the country not far from Woodstock, so we met at Albert’s. I brought Bob’s painting, Elliott’s photo of the five of us, and our Next of Kin picture with the families. Milt licked his chops over these visuals and asked the name of the album. “And what’s the name of the group?” I told him we were thinking of going with the album title Music from Big Pink. He said, “What’s Big Pink?” I told him about our clubhouse, where the music we were making had originated. “Can we get a photo of that house,” he asked, “so we understand what Big Pink is?”

  I said, “It’s really kind of ugly, and the house is pink.”

  “That’s okay,” Milt said, “it may be good. What about the group’s name?”

  “We don’t have a fancy name. We’re just called ‘the Band.’ ”

  Albert chuckled. “Isn’t that great? A band with no name. Just ‘the Band.’ No nonsense. I love it.” Milt nodded in confused agreement.

  John Simon suggested Dominique should write a little description of Big Pink and the music for the album no
tes. “She’s a writer. She should write something in her broken English. She’s the only one who’s been here through it all with you guys.” So Dominique wrote: “A pink house seated in the sun of Overlook Mountain in West Saugerties, New York. Big Pink bore this music and these songs along its way. It’s the first witness of this album that’s been thought and composed right there inside its walls.”

  “It’s perfect,” John said. “Like French prose in English.”

  Those were all the ingredients Milt Glaser needed to put together the double-fold album cover design. Nobody had ever seen an album package like it before, especially our record company. By then Alan Livingston, the president of Capitol Records who had signed us, was no longer there. The inmates were running the asylum, and they were trying to figure out who the hell we were. They suggested getting an elephant painted pink in front of Tower Records in LA for the release of our record.

  Albert and I flew to Los Angeles to get on the same page with Capitol’s new president, Stanley Gortikov, and try to enlighten the company as to what Big Pink and the Band represented, which most certainly was not a pink elephant, nor a “name this band” contest, which Capitol had also suggested. Albert gave a fifteen-minute monologue to the Capitol promo and advertising staff, but as I looked around the room at their faces I could see they had no idea what he was saying. Albert had a way of talking over your head in an almost condescending tone that made people embarrassed to admit they didn’t follow. I enjoyed his performance much more than the staff, who were nodding their heads in agreement at what they didn’t understand. When Albert finished, I ran down a list of what they shouldn’t do to represent the Band, which was everything they wanted to do.

  Since we’d first come together as the Hawks, part of the discovery process in making the group work was figuring out what each of us was good at. We all took on different responsibilities. When it came to dealing with the outside world—management, record company, art directors, the press—those tasks fell in my direction, probably because they came more naturally to me than to the other guys. Somewhere along the line I had found myself taking on more and more. It had gone that way slowly: Levon had become our leader when we left Ronnie; then he and I began to share that responsibility. When Bob first tried to hire me, I had convinced him and Albert that they needed our whole group—we all shared a loyalty that couldn’t be betrayed—but because of our strong connection on both a musical and personal level, it seemed natural that I should step up and become the intermediary. When Levon left, all of those responsibilities fell on me; and when he came back he was comfortable with that because it was stuff he didn’t want to do anyway. But I bristled when people said I was the leader of the Band. I was doing what needed to be done on behalf of the guys, but I didn’t want to be called the leader any more than Richard wanted to be referred to as the lead singer. Ours was an equal playing field, with each person holding up his end and doing what he could for the sake of the group.

  On the flight back east, Albert said he thought our trip had been very helpful to the record company. They had a much clearer understanding of the Band and our music. I said, “It looks different, sounds different, and doesn’t fit into any of their ready-made categories. They think it’s underground, which maybe it is.”

  “A lot of really good things start in the underground,” Albert responded. “That’s not a bad thing.”

  —

  Dominique and I decided to get married at the Church on the Mount in Woodstock. An archbishop presided over this shrine and parish, and Dominique thought that would impress her parents and sister. (Unfortunately, we heard at a later date that the archbishop, Father Francis Brothers, had gotten in some hot water with the Church over skirt chasing, so Dominique’s family wasn’t quite as impressed as we had hoped.) I wasn’t that particular about the religious affiliation for the ceremony, but I knew it had meaning for Dominique and her family.

  My mother came down from Toronto for the occasion. Just our immediate families and the gang were on hand. Levon served as best man, and Albert and Sally held a reception at their place after the service. I was awkward and out of sorts on the day, I have to admit. Sure, you just put one foot in front of the other, but I kept tripping over my own feet and wandering off with the guys. Bob and Sara helped me feel more grounded as the day wore on. I felt bad for Dominique that I was having trouble adjusting to the altitude. I absolutely wanted to be with her, but the ritual at the Church on the Mount turned my head inside out.

  Finally that night, when it was just Dominique and me on our own, I tried to explain that something about this process knocked me off balance and made me feel unsure of myself. Was it because of my strange upbringing? The way my parents broke up? My father situation? That this whole ceremony felt so conventional? That I’d been on the road since I was sixteen, and married life seemed like an oxymoron? My partner, my bride, my darling Dominique, comforted me and helped me find a little serenity.

  And on that special night, we got pregnant.

  Glory be.

  A few days after the wedding, I accompanied my mother back to Toronto to help her move into a new apartment. When I flew back to New York, Dominique, Richard, and Levon all came to pick me up at the Albany Airport. Immediately I knew something was wrong. I could feel a sullen mood among them. “What’s the matter?” I asked. Richard spoke first. “Well, I’ve got some bad news. Last night I totaled your Mustang.” My mouth dropped open.

  The story was: Levon and his old girlfriend Bonnie had met up with Dominique and Richard at the Café Espresso. They decided to head out to Big Pink, and Richard asked Dominique if he could drive the Mustang. As they sped out of town on the two-lane blacktop toward West Saugerties, Richard, with a few drinks under his belt, decided to see what this muscle car was made of. It was very dark up ahead and Dominique asked if he could see okay. He said, “I see like a lynx.” But then they flew around a curve way too fast, and the car skidded off the shoulder and smashed violently into a line of cement posts meant to prevent vehicles from going over the side. They eventually ended up sideways in a ditch. Dominique was completely flipped out and terrified. And all Richard could say was “Total fuckup.” He lit a match to check the damage. “Put that out! You’re going to blow us up!” Dominique yelled. “Get out! Get out!”

  As they crawled through the driver’s-side door, a police car came along; it stopped in the road and the cops put on their lights to investigate. Richard told Dominique that he didn’t have his license with him, and she should say that she was driving. When the police looked at her license, they said, “This is from Quebec, and it’s expired.” Dominique said that she didn’t speak very good English and had misunderstood, and that actually Richard had been driving.

  Just then, Levon and Bonnie came screeching around the curve in her Corvette. They slammed on the brakes, missing the cop car by inches, and the policemen dove into the ditch in fear for their lives. Crawling back onto the road, the cops were fuming. They yanked Levon out of the car, threw him on the hood, and cuffed him. Then they took everybody to the courthouse. Albert had to come bail them out. He showed up with a bundle of cash, and the judge and police kept referring to him as Mr. Goldman. Freed on bail, Dominique, Richard, Levon, and Bonnie then went to Big Pink to meet up with Rick, Garth, and John Simon. While they were there John backed into one of their cars, which made it a “three strikes and you’re out” evening, and on top of that, it happened to be April Fools’ day.

  As I tried to absorb this story, of course I was upset to hear my new car was destroyed, but what really tore me up inside was that Dominique could have been killed. I kept visualizing that Mustang careening off the road and pounding into the cement posts—over and over, like a nightmare.

  This was turning out to be a life-changing period of time. After my wedding and my car getting totaled, on April 3, Martin Luther King Jr. made a speech that turned the nation inside out, the “mountaintop” sermon. Only a great orator, a great leader, could have ma
de that speech. The following day he was shot dead on a motel balcony in Memphis, Tennessee. The country wept. The anger, the sadness, the hurt spilled out into the streets of cities and towns across the land: “a good man gone down.” Two months later, on June 5, Robert Kennedy was assassinated in Los Angeles, while running for president. Our generation felt he was one of us, somebody we could fully relate to, somebody we could support with unabashed conviction. His death crushed a tremendous amount of hope. We were tore down, and again the country was in mourning. When our album came out four weeks later, it almost felt like a reflection of the sadness and disillusionment that hung low over the nation.

  —

  Music from Big Pink was released a few days before my birthday in July 1968. Naturally we were anxious to see how our music would be accepted out in the world, especially since our sound no longer resembled anything we had done in the past. As it turned out, it was extremely well received, particularly among music people. The Hawks had long been called “musicians’ musicians,” and it was always a good feeling when our peers sounded the trumpet. Word got back to us in Woodstock that George Harrison had scored an advance copy and was singing our praises. Pretty soon we heard that Eric Clapton was on a mission to convert all ears he came in contact with to the sound of the Band. The enthusiastic review in Jann Wenner’s groundbreaking new magazine, Rolling Stone, was even written by a fellow musician, Al Kooper, whom I had played with on Bob’s album Blonde on Blonde. This kind of approbation reached deep in our souls. I started feeling like anything else would just be a bonus.