Albert had scheduled more meetings with Capitol Records in Los Angeles, so he and I flew out and checked into the Chateau Marmont. Our friend and photographer du jour, Barry Feinstein, brought us up to Alan Pariser’s house in the Hollywood Hills, a mecca for music people and art directors. Alan was a serious music person and was managing a new group called Delaney & Bonnie that featured a rich pool of talent. He loved holding listening sessions for major new records. He had the coolest-sounding home stereo system and the best weed in LA. Alan introduced me to Eric Clapton, who was there with his Cream bandmate Ginger Baker. Eric confirmed his deep regard for Music from Big Pink and then confided that he was on his last run with Cream—Big Pink had turned him around with its subtleties and laid-back feeling. Cream played with a much more bombastic approach and he wanted a change. That was a huge compliment coming from Eric, but I liked some of Cream’s songs and wasn’t sure how I felt about our record being partially responsible for their demise.
Capitol was delighted with the attention Big Pink was getting, and the record-company execs now had a better fix on who our music spoke to. They hoped we’d be able to go out and do shows in support of the record, and Albert told them we were considering live dates. Rolling Stone reached out as well, wanting to do a cover story on us. I felt very appreciative of the offer, but I was hesitant. We had trouble letting go of the whole mystique of the Band. All anyone knew of us was that we were affiliated with Bob Dylan and that we lived somewhere up in the mountains. Coming out into the open would pull back a veil that we thought suited us, so we decided to postpone the Rolling Stone article for the time being.
At a music-business event in New York, Ahmet Ertegun, the president of Atlantic Records, approached me, grinning like a cat that just caught a mouse. He must’ve had a few, because I could only make out half of what he was saying, but the gist was that Atlantic owned some of our earlier Hawks recordings, and he intended to release them, with or without our approval. Just then, his right-hand guy and ace record producer, Jerry Wexler, came over and shook my hand, saying he’d known about the Hawks for a long time and really liked our new record.
“Yeah,” Ahmet said, “we have some of their music in our vaults that I want to release. It’s great when some other company does all the work and pays for everything, and we get to piggyback on their success!” He took a sip of his drink and a puff on his cigarette, and nodded at me: Live and learn, kid.
Jerry laughed. “Well here’s some good news: I’m going to Muscle Shoals to record ‘The Weight’ with Aretha Franklin, and I got Duane Allman on guitar.”
“That’s unbelievable!” I said. “I just heard a couple other people are cutting it, too, the Staples and Jackie DeShannon.”
“Jerry will blow their versions away with Aretha, trust me,” Ahmet said as he started to walk away. “Nice being in business with you.”
Albert and his people were discussing plans to set up our tour, but I wasn’t anxious to hit the road just yet. We only had the songs from our album to go out with and still needed to put together a full repertoire. Privately I had a certain admiration for Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys, who didn’t tour and concentrated instead on songwriting and making interestingly produced records. Same thing for the Beatles—they were a music-making machine around this time. And I had been on the road since I was sixteen, so I didn’t feel that appetite needed to be served just yet.
—
With Dominique’s pregnancy, we looked for a house in Woodstock that had more of a family feel to it. We found a place on the other side of town, up Boggs Hill Road, fully furnished and ready to go. John Simon decided to rent the house right next door, which made it even better. And after the record came out with pictures of Big Pink on the jacket, the guys and I knew we had to get out of there if we wanted to preserve our privacy. So when the lease ran out, we let the place go, though not without a certain amount of sentimentality.
Not long after, Eric Clapton called from England and asked if he could come pay us a visit in Woodstock with his girlfriend. John Simon said they could stay at his house. Eric was such a gentleman when he arrived, and pleased to be in our surroundings. It seemed he wanted to witness the magic of this place where the basement tapes had come from and Big Pink was created. The other guys in the Band, Albert, Bob—all of us—lived quite privately, and I hoped Eric wouldn’t find it too low-key and boring. I took him around town and showed him the millstream that they said the song “Down by the Old Mill Stream” was written about. I might have even taken him over to see Clarence Schmidt’s place, a dwelling built on the side of a hill out of junk and trash. It looked like a big garbage heap, or perhaps even a sculpture. Beside his house was an abandoned car onto which he had built four stories that you entered by getting into the car. At one point Schmidt had covered his entire house with aluminum foil, but the air force had him remove it because it was causing problems with their radar. He had also set up memorials in his yard to people who were still alive. He had a nice one for Joan Baez.
I could tell Eric wanted to make some music with us, but when I confessed that we didn’t jam, he looked around like, Well, what do you do up here? I didn’t know how to explain that these days we just worked on songs and didn’t do much jamming. He took it in stride, but I don’t know if he found his visit very fulfilling. (Many years later, when Eric inducted the Band into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, he admitted for the first time that when he came to visit us in Woodstock, he was really coming to ask if he could become a member of the Band but never worked up the nerve to ask. I jokingly asked if he was suggesting that we could have two guitar players, or did he want to take my job? He never answered.)
A few weeks later George Harrison and his wife, Pattie, came to Woodstock. George had been increasingly outspoken in regard to our music, and we got the impression that he was keen to see what we were up to in this neck of the woods. I think he was the biggest fan among the Beatles of Bob’s writing, and he seemed to have a curiosity about what was happening out in the world, whether in India with the Maharishi, in Haight-Ashbury, or here with us. I asked Albert if they could stay at his place, but for some reason Albert wasn’t that into the idea. Come to think of it, I never did see him play a Beatles record. George and Pattie had Mal Evans, the Beatles’ trusty road manager, with them, and I wanted them to feel welcome and comfortable, so Albert finally agreed. During this period Bob was keeping a very low profile, and when I asked him if he wanted to see George while he was in town, he too was a little iffy at first. What a bunch of grumps we are up here in the Catskills, I thought.
But George was one of the most open people I’d ever met, and Pattie was one of the prettiest and sweetest. George spoke incredibly candidly about the problems within the Beatles. John, he said, was far out on a limb, testing his balance. “Kinda crazy,” he laughed. And our dear Ringo was following in the tradition of many a hard-drinking Brit—apparently he had threatened to quit the band at one point. George was quick to admit there were serious tensions between Paul and him. “Whenever I present a tune, the Lennon and McCartney songwriting team will ignore it as long as they can,” he said. “Sometimes I even have to fight for my guitar parts. Paul has such a clear idea of how the song should go that he tells me what to play, or he wants to play it himself.” I felt bad hearing of their struggles, but with that kind of phenomenal success, insanity couldn’t be lurking too far behind. Hearing George’s inside story gave us even more confidence that our “under the radar” method might be wise. The Band had been together for several years already and had witnessed Bob’s success close up, so we felt a little immune to the obvious pitfalls of the music business. But we would soon learn that no one is bulletproof when it comes to fame and success.
I was very curious about recording techniques the Beatles had discovered. George described their process as extremely experimental and sometimes accidental. I could definitely relate to that. When George inquired about the Band’s recording methods, I could barely keep up
with him. For every question I posed to him, he asked me two about Big Pink and The Basement Tapes: “How did you get that guitar sound on ‘Tears of Rage’?” I told him about Garth’s black box. “Speaking of Garth, how does he bend the notes on his organ?” To that I just gave him a wink. George smiled. “I love the sound of Levon’s drums. It reminds me a little of Ringo’s on ‘A Day in the Life.’ ”
Eric and George may have enjoyed their visits to Woodstock, but at our house on Boggs Hill, a rural reality soon set in for Dominique and me that we were so not ready for. There was a large storage area by the house, and during the night our cats would get into knock-down, drag-out fights in there with other cats from around the neighborhood. We’d wake up to howling and squalling and I’d have to run down with a broom and chase the other cats away, but they’d be back the very next night. And every week when I put the trash out for pickup, it would be scattered all over the yard by raccoons. One morning I looked outside and saw four raccoons enjoying leftovers from the cans. I ran out and charged them, hollering and waving my arms, but they just stared at me with their bandit-masked faces and hissed back aggressively. It stopped me dead in my tracks. I said, “Bon appétit,” and walked back in the house.
One evening in our bedroom, with Dominique asleep and me up watching TV, I was startled by a bird flying manically around the room. After a moment I realized it wasn’t a bird at all—it was a bat. I’d duck every time it flew over the bed, trying to figure out what to do. Eventually I crawled along the floor to the wall and opened a window, and it flew right out. The next day I asked David Boyle, the local Mr. Fix-it, to come by. We went together into an attic area off the bedroom. Inside, there were about twenty bats hanging upside down from the rafters. I was totally creeped out. Dominique cried, “You have to get rid of them. I can’t live like this!” David grinned and removed them in glass jars, one by one.
The other guys seemed to manage this stuff a little better. Rick and Richard were cruising Ohayo Mountain Road one night when they hit and killed a deer. Rick insisted on carting the dead animal back to his place. Leaving it on the road wasn’t an option—he used to be a butcher and couldn’t relate to letting it go to waste. So they sent for Garth, Levon, and me to come help out. Once we got the carcass back to Rick’s, Dominique and I had to excuse ourselves. We couldn’t imagine taking part in the skinning procedure or the feast. I asked Dominique if she knew the expression “city slicker.” She laughed. “I didn’t, but I do now. This country living is driving me crazy.”
—
I don’t know if you would call it a celebration, exactly, but after Big Pink was released, all hell broke loose among the boys. The accident in my Mustang was only the beginning. Rick and Richard were on a rampage of destruction around Woodstock, with Levon coming up on the inside. Richard’s relationship with alcohol started growing new roots. Prescription pills were being passed around, and Rick liked to be at the front of the line—anything goes. All seemed in good fun, but some of the classic old cars the boys had acquired, like the Hupmobile, were being found upside down on various side roads around town. Car wrecks with Richard, Rick, and Levon became a regular occurrence. All Garth and I could do was get out of the way.
After one crash, Rick went ahead and bought himself a sweetheart of a classic automobile. I don’t recall the make, but it was a beauty. He looked sharp sporting around town in that baby. Then we got a call in the middle of the night that he’d wrapped his pretty little car around a tree and been rushed to the hospital in Kingston, New York, in critical condition. This wasn’t funny anymore. We were terrified that this could be fatal.
We went to visit him as soon as we were allowed to and were shocked at the sight. They had shaved his head and drilled two holes in his skull, one on each side. There were tongs inserted in the holes for traction. He had broken his neck badly and this was the only way he could heal properly. He also had a laceration and stitches on one cheek under his eye. The doctor said he was lucky. I thought to myself, Lucky? But he was right. Rick had almost lost an eye, and his neck fracture could have killed him.
He obviously couldn’t move his head, so I leaned over him and asked, “How are you doing, brother?”
“My neck hurts bad,” Rick said in a dry rasp. “This cut on my face is sore, but surprisingly, the holes in my skull don’t hurt hardly at all.” As medicated and out of it as he was, I could see terrible sadness and remorse in his eyes. He trembled as he spoke. “I’m sorry, guys. I really fucked up and I’m so sorry. This screws up our plans, but I’m gonna heal quick as I can and I won’t slow us down ever again.”
I felt terrible for him. A high-intensity guy with energy to spare, he looked trapped in this setting. I squeezed his hand and said, “Just get better.”
The doctor told us Rick would have to stay in the hospital for a month to six weeks. Knowing how restless and fidgety he could be made me wonder how he would be able to lie still for so long, but we were just relieved that he hadn’t been killed and that in time he would recover. Rick was seeing an attractive local girl named Grace, who sat quietly beside his hospital bed crocheting or knitting, looking calm and devoted.
Rick’s situation meant we couldn’t go out and play concerts in support of Big Pink. As the designated spokesperson for the Band, I didn’t want to talk about the accident with the press, so I made a conscious decision not to do interviews for the album—a decision that came off as extremely unusual. Here a record had come out with big buzz around it, by a group called simply “the Band.” The very people who were booed continuously with Bob Dylan? With their music now being covered by a slew of artists. What an opener! And then…silence. The mystique around us grew even deeper.
We were biding our time until Rick was back on his feet, but in the meantime Woodstock itself was slowly taking on a legendary status, with a powerful magnetic effect on other artists. Musicians and showbiz people suddenly seemed to be flocking to the area. Comedian Henny Youngman and the actor Lee Marvin had lived here for years, but you’d also run into actors like Michael J. Pollard and musicians like Tim Hardin and Fred Neil around town.
One day, I was over at Levon’s when Tim Hardin and his young son stopped by for a little visit. Tim seemed to be a bit unsteady on his feet. It was no secret that he used heroin, and he looked pretty groggy. Levon said he was going to make some coffee and went into the kitchen. We had a big record collection in the living room, beside the phonograph player. Stacks and stacks of LPs and 45s were piled high on a table. Tim started looking through the LPs, commenting on certain records. His kid stood by his side, looking around the place.
I went to help Levon bring in the coffee and cookies when I heard a thunderous crash. I looked back to see that most of the records had fallen off the table to the floor, and Tim was pulling himself up from the table. Levon and I hurried over to see if he and the boy were okay and to assess the damage.
Tim straightened his jacket and gathered himself. He sternly eyed his son and said, “Look at this mess! You’ve knocked all these records on the floor. Come on, we’ve got to pick them up and put them back the way they were.”
The boy looked confused and upset and leaned down to pick up the discs. I told him not to worry about them; we were going to move them anyway. Then I turned to Tim. “I saw what happened. I can’t believe you’re laying this on the kid, man. This is some weird shit.”
Levon abruptly told Tim that we’d better have coffee some other time. Tim took his kid by the shoulder and started leading him toward the door.
“Do you need a ride?” I called after him. “I really don’t think you should be driving.”
He yelled back, “The hell with you! I can do anything I damn well feel like,” and slammed the door behind him.
Tim had written some wonderful songs, and at that moment he was at the top of his game with “If I Were a Carpenter.” It made this incident even more disturbing—to see that his problems could totally overshadow his gift.
—
Carnegie Hall in New York was presenting Jacques Brel, and Dominique insisted we go. She had hyped me about his powerful, passionate performances, and he didn’t disappoint. It was extraordinary. When he sang “Amsterdam,” the hall exploded with emotion, people standing with one arm in the air, belting out the words to the song in French. It was all very different from the concerts I was used to. Dominique whispered to me the meaning of the words he was singing.
After that, when she played her records around the house, she would occasionally translate the lyrics for me. From this, and from seeing Jacques Brel, I gained a whole new awareness of how poetic the music was. These songwriters were inspired by Rimbaud and Verlaine, Balzac, Louis Aragon, and Victor Hugo, and so many European, Russian, and Asian writers and artists. Musically, a bit of American inspiration was thrown in there too, but this music was more classic and ageless. It reached back to a place and tradition we didn’t have in the New World. This music, like the foreign film scripts I was reading, made a connection for me. It influenced my writing in a unique way that I figured most North American songwriters didn’t have access to.
One afternoon, a couple of the guys and I were over at Albert’s house in Bearsville, talking about upcoming possibilities for when Rick was back to full strength. Albert said that promoters all over the country were inquiring about booking the Band but that the number one concert promoter, Bill Graham, had asked if he could come up to Woodstock to meet with us personally. We knew that when we were ready for our debut performances, Bill was the man who could present us in the proper light. Albert asked me to meet with him. “He’ll drive up next week and tell you his ideas if you’re cool with that.”
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