The first couple of nights, we brought Allen to the Bear for dinner. But after a couple of days he announced that he was having a slow start on the music. From now on, he wanted to stay in the cabin working, so we arranged to have food and whatever else he needed brought in daily. When I would stop by to see how the charts were coming along, he looked a bit discouraged. He claimed that he was having some kind of writer’s block and hoped that he would have a breakthrough soon. It even crossed my mind that maybe he never wrote the charts in New Orleans and didn’t want to admit it. Could it be that our music didn’t fit his writing style—that our luck with “Life Is a Carnival” was a one-off? I asked him point-blank whether he thought this whole thing would work; the days were going by, and we were running out of time.
“No,” he said, “the music is great. I need to pull it together. Give me another day.”
The following day when I went by, Allen answered the door looking terrible. Disheveled, worried, and sickly. He pointed at his ears. He said in a loud voice, “I lost my hearing!”
I said, “You can’t—”
“What? Speak up! My ears are closed!”
Oh, no, I thought. We’re doomed.
I called a local doctor we knew and brought him to Allen’s cabin later that night.
“My goodness!” said the doctor. “You have a bad infection in both ears. They’re red, swollen, and feverish—very unusual.” He gave Allen strong antibiotics and some other medicines to take immediately. I looked out the cabin window at the four feet of snow and the woodsy wilderness and thought, We’ve put poor Allen Toussaint in this foreign setting, and under all this pressure, and it’s made him go deaf.
In the morning, I went back to Allen’s cabin and wrote on a piece of paper, “I understand if you want to go home. Don’t worry. We’ll figure out the concert.” But when he responded to it, he was speaking almost normally, and told me he felt much better. The medicine was working and he had already written two more horn charts. I thought, Well I’ll be damned. Beethoven’s deafness worked for him. Why not Mr. Toussaint? Garth looked over some of Allen’s charts and smiled, like he could already smell that jambalaya cooking.
With each day, Allen’s condition improved. Even better, he was tearing away at those horn charts. Electricity filled the air as he wrote day and night. Papers flying, running out of pencils and ink, all while the rest of us had a lovely little Christmas with the kids. Allen didn’t want to be disturbed.
Driving into New York the day after Christmas to start rehearsals with the horn section, Allen was still writing and refining charts in the backseat, humming quietly to himself. John Simon and Howard Johnson had put together a fantastic horn section. We would have Howard himself on baritone sax, tuba, and euphonium, the legendary Snooky Young on trumpet and flugelhorn, Joe Farrell on tenor, soprano sax, and English horn, Earl McIntyre, trombone, and J. D. Parron, alto sax and clarinet. John Simon said these cats could handle anything that Toussaint was putting down. Well, step right up, I thought, ’cause Allen’s got “Creole style” all his own.
That night, we all met up to rehearse at Ultra Sonic Studios in Long Island. We needed everybody to get this music under their skin quickly. There was no guarantee these charts were going to work, or that the Band’s sound would mesh with this horn section. When everyone was in place, Allen tapped on his music stand. “Let’s try ‘Caledonia Mission.’ ” We scrambled through it two times, making adjustments. Then, on the third run-through, we heard for the first time what it was really supposed to sound like. Very promising, I thought. Just a touch of Macon, Georgia, below the surface. Next we ran through “Life Is a Carnival,” knowing that horn part was tried and true. “The Unfaithful Servant” wasn’t ready to take out of the oven just yet, and Allen wanted to make some changes on it. By the time we got to “Don’t Do It,” the horn section was getting relaxed and accustomed to Toussaint’s flavor—extra cayenne pepper.
Allen had worked on these charts up in Woodstock, but we started from scratch in the rehearsal hall on one old song I wanted to take a shot at, Chuck Willis’s “Hang Up My Rock and Roll Shoes.” Our friend Bobby Charles, who was from Louisiana, had come by and he loved the idea. He promenaded around with a big ol’ alligator smile as we ran through it.
By the time we wrapped up at Ultra Sonic, there were signs we could win this battle, but we still had a ways to go and very little time. Half the songs were still out on the ledge. Allen calmly said, “I’ve got work to do, but we’ll do better tomorrow.”
“We’ve only got tomorrow,” I reminded him. “We rehearse onstage at the theater, and the next night is our first show.”
We loaded in and set up our equipment on December 27 at the Academy of Music on 14th Street. The Academy was a very large, beautiful old theater, warm and inviting. We’d been told it was one of the best-sounding venues around. At the same time, recording engineer extraordinaire Phil Ramone and Bearsville Studios’ Mark Harman were setting up mics and a couple of sound baffles to start getting some levels on the mobile recording equipment.
John Simon kept an eye and ear out for the changes Allen was making with the horn section. Everything was getting better, but not better enough. There were sections in a few songs that weren’t blending well. Everyone pitched in—the horn players made suggestions, Garth had ideas, and Allen felt convinced he knew what to do. Allen decided he was going to sit with the horn section so he could help them with signals and reminders, and he would also be able to hear any rough spots that still needed work.
On Tuesday, December 28, we played the first of our four shows. We finally came up with a song list for everybody just before the curtain went up. We all felt a stir of confidence around us. Everyone was in shape to play our asses off. The five of us got in a huddle and said, “Come on, let’s make some noise.”
As we took the stage, the audience erupted in a roar. It was as if they could sense something was going down tonight. I looked at each of the guys, and they all seemed salty and ready to dig in. We pounded out “Up on Cripple Creek” and “The Shape I’m In” and steamed through the first half of the show with our engines revving. Before the second half of the show I announced, “We are going to do something we’ve never done before,” and introduced Allen Toussaint and the horn section to wild cheers from the audience, like they were privy to an exclusive revival. We hit “Life Is a Carnival” with lightning force. We got through the set with high spirits, rough spots and all. Allen was still making some changes with the horns and said, “It’s only gonna get better.” Phil Ramone agreed and said he only had a few screw-ups, but now they were ready and able.
Before the rehearsals, I had asked Bob if he’d like to come and do a few songs with us on New Year’s Eve. He still wasn’t playing live during this period, so I knew he’d want a little time to think it over. Now I called him from the city to see if he was up for it. He said he liked the idea and would come to the theater in the afternoon before the show on New Year’s Eve, and we could figure out what songs to do. We had been so distracted with getting the horns in shape and the recording that rehearsing with Bob had never really come into play. We had made so much music together over the years I thought we could probably wing it.
Each night there were high points for the Band’s performance, or the horn section, or the sound of the recording, and it was wonderful to have four nights to get our message across. It was great too having friends witness the process. Bobby Charles was spreading good cheer, and Dr. John showed up at one point. But first he came by the Gramercy Park Hotel, where we were staying, and sprinkled some gris-gris powder in the corners of my suite—just for good measure.
For the next show they wheeled our dear old friend Doc Pomus, who was now in a wheelchair, down to the front row. We hadn’t seen him in several years, but in that time his songwriting reputation had expanded to truly legendary status. Doc looked very much the same, with his “light up the room” smile and only a few more gray hairs. If you wanna play bette
r, all you gotta do is put Doc Pomus in the front row. We played much of that show directly to Doc.
On the third night, filmmakers Howard Alk and Murray Lerner shot a few songs of the show, really just for preservation and the archives. The next afternoon, when we were running over a few tunes with Bob, some union reps showed up at the hall and said if we did any more filming without going through them, they would destroy the cameras. “Somebody could have an accident.” We got the message loud and clear and promised no more filming. Their interruption put a crimp in our rehearsal, but we played through a couple of songs of Bob’s we had recorded in the basement days, like “Crash on the Levee” (also called “Down in the Flood”). We ran through the songs just enough to refresh our memory but hardly to the point of having a down-pat arrangement. Ragged but fun, just the way we rolled with Bob.
Well, this was it: New Year’s Eve, the last night of this joyful experience. We went on a little later in the evening, so we could hit that magic chord at the stroke of midnight. Our families and friends were there, and we were all pumped to bring in the New Year with a bang. We played hard and tight, with a sense of abandon, like the last round of a championship heavyweight fight. What a feeling of elation and pride to see all the guys at the top of their game. When Garth played the intro to “Chest Fever,” which he called “The Genetic Method,” I was reminded there was no other keyboard player in rock ’n’ roll who had his improvisational abilities and imagination. At ten seconds to midnight, I started the countdown. Garth flew into “Auld Lang Syne” as the clock struck twelve, and the audience went wild.
We ended our set with “(I Don’t Wanna) Hang Up My Rock and Roll Shoes,” and no one in the house wanted to hang them up either. We went out for the encore with a sixth member in the group. The lights were low, so the crowd didn’t know yet what we had in store. Bob was using a Gibson electric guitar that was way out of tune, so I gave him my Tele and took the Gibson, tuning it up quickly. Then the lights came on, and Bob stepped to the mic. The audience thought they were visiting rock ’n’ roll heaven. We did “Down in the Flood,” “When I Paint My Masterpiece,” and “Don’t Ya Tell Henry,” and it felt loose and magical.
I turned my back to the audience and asked Bob, “You wanna do one more?”
“Okay,” he said. “What do you wanna do?”
Rick jumped in. “Let’s do ‘Like a Rolling Stone.’ ”
Bob said into the mic, “We haven’t played this one in six years.”
I said, “Sixteen years!”
Bob repeated, “Sixteen years!” and kicked into the intro. Playing that song was like riding a bicycle for us. It came back in a flash.
—
What a night. What a show. What a New Year’s Eve! It was fantastic to have Bob there with us to celebrate. Allen Toussaint said this had been one of the highlights of his life. The horn players were thrilled, and Phil Ramone felt he’d captured it beautifully. Everybody was on a high, probably nobody more so than me. It was a perfect way to start the New Year.
I told Bob Cato that we wanted to call the album Rock of Ages. There was an old-timey hymn of that name. Cato told me that his son, Eric, had just photographed the face of a tiny statue that looked ancient and gold. He showed it to me, and I said, “Let’s use it for the cover.” When the album came out that summer, one of the best music journalists in the world, Ralph J. Gleason, reviewed it for Rolling Stone. He compared the album to some of the best live records ever: Mingus at Monterey, Ray Charles in Person, Duke Ellington’s Seattle Concert, Miles at the Blackhawk, and more. Certainly we wanted people to enjoy our efforts on this live album, but Mr. Gleason’s affirmation had already made it all worthwhile to me.
Nineteen seventy-two was an extraordinary year for cinema. When you got Coppola’s The Godfather, Buñuel’s The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, Bergman’s Cries and Whispers, Elaine May’s Heartbreak Kid, Herzog’s Aguirre, the Wrath of God, Fosse’s Cabaret, Boorman’s Deliverance, Perry Henzell’s The Harder They Come, Fassbinder’s The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant, and John Huston’s Fat City as the tip of the iceberg, you knew you were in a golden age. Dominique and I took in as much as we could at the “artsy” Woodstock Cinema, and sometimes we would drive to neighboring towns like Kingston or Saugerties for a fix, but going into New York City and bingeing on new releases was not unheard of.
Several people had gotten in touch to see if the Band would be interested in doing music for their films. I wanted to find a movie we could sink our teeth into, but it hadn’t come our way. We had been asked about creating the music for Sydney Pollack’s Jeremiah Johnson with Robert Redford. I read the script but didn’t think it was our calling. Photographer Jerry Schatzberg had just directed a movie called Scarecrow with Al Pacino and Gene Hackman, but again, not the right fit. The other guys didn’t care that much about movies to begin with, so I knew we would have to find just the right thing.
Then I received a script from the Japanese director Hiroshi Teshigahara. He had directed a black-and-white film called Woman in the Dunes that haunted me. The script was titled Summer Soldiers, and it took place during the Vietnam War. It centered on deserters from the war in the underground of Japanese society. Reading the script, somehow, something didn’t gel. I couldn’t tell if the story was getting lost in translation or what was missing. I sent a message back saying it wasn’t right for us.
If I can’t even find the right material with Hiroshi Teshigahara, I thought, I give up.
—
During our last round of live dates leading up to the Academy of Music, Jon Taplin had struggled to gather us together. He was doing a really good job as road manager but no doubt feeling frustrated. One day, when he was pushing hard to get everybody ready so we wouldn’t miss our flight, Levon threw him up against the wall and pressed his arm into his neck, yelling and threatening him. Levon was edgy from something he had taken, and reasoning with him wasn’t working.
After the tour ended, Jon came to me and said that he was thinking of moving on and getting into producing movies. He spoke of how tough it had become to do his job, wrangling this bunch of cats. I’d had a special relationship with Jon from the beginning, and I have to say it hurt to see him go.
For me, the only upside to Jon’s leaving was his new ambition to produce movies. We were both film buffs, and I found his new direction extremely exciting. A few weeks later, Jon called me, thrilled about a project he had mentioned before he left. “You remember the movie I told you might come together with this very talented Italian American director? Well, it looks like it’s going to happen, and I’ll produce. It’s tentatively called Season of the Witch, and it stars this young actor Robert De Niro, who is amazing. I think the director is the real thing too. His name is Martin Scorsese, and he was the assistant director on the Woodstock movie.”
—
In the New Year, we took a breather while finishing up the Rock of Ages album. I spent more time in Montreal, and Levon went up to Boston to take some drum classes at the Berklee College of Music. Spending time with family was important too: by then Rick, Richard, Levon, and I all had young kids, and we wanted to be there for these precious years. During this downtime, our accountant, Marshall Gelfand, came up to my studio in Woodstock for a business meeting with us all. I had always had a good feeling about Marshall. I could tell he was honest and trustworthy. He would make the trek up to Woodstock every so often when there were tax issues to discuss or investments for business that were necessary. Over a period of years, as these meetings went on, things became more informal. Levon would take out a bag of grass and use Marshall’s tax papers to remove some of the sticks and seeds. He would then proceed to roll a beautiful joint, light it, and hand it to Marshall, who would laugh and politely refuse. On one occasion Marshall claimed he would take a puff when Levon had a million bucks in his account.
That spring, during one of these meetings, Levon insisted we all invest in shopping centers in Arkansas. The other guys and I didn’t k
now if this was a wise move, so we left it up to our business manager. Marshall thought it was an obscure idea, but said he would look into it. He came back saying that he couldn’t recommend it. After that Levon never felt the same about Marshall. I spent a lot of time trying to convince him that Marshall wasn’t screwing us, and that neither were the concert promoters, nor our lawyer, David Braun, nor Bob Dylan over our publishing. Albert always made sure the concert promoters weren’t taking too much under the table—“You gotta give them a little room to get the best out of them,” he’d say. With Albert, whatever the deal was, he was right up front about it, more straightforward than most management companies at that time, yet Levon was suspicious of him as well.
I knew what Levon was getting at. Recording artists always got taken advantage of, and we’d seen it happen with some of our friends. We were lucky to have fallen in with a group of fair-minded associates in a business that was infamous for its cheating ways. I wasn’t quite sure exactly why Levon was so caught up in thinking all businesspeople around him had their hands in his pockets. Sometimes it felt like his paranoia was drug induced; other times it seemed like a country-boy inferiority complex. I tried everything I could to help him not obsess about something that wasn’t happening. It was painful to be around. He harped on it, over and over, until it drove all the guys crazy. Finally Rick and Richard told him that if he could show them one example of anybody stealing a nickel from us, “we’ll start a revolt.”
Around this same time, Dominique kept expressing that she felt the Woodstock scene was becoming a darker place, more drug infested. She heard stories from a hundred years ago about how native people from around here would avoid this area—bad juju. This was the Band’s headquarters, for better or worse, and I couldn’t just scrub it. Still, she did open my eyes to the idea that something else—somewhere else—might work. But where? Getting everybody to move to Montreal wasn’t going to happen. Going back into New York City just felt obnoxious now that we had kids and families. I also sensed that those years I’d spent living in the city at the Chelsea Hotel were a golden age. I’d tasted the honey, and it don’t get much sweeter than that.
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