This Wheel's on Fire

by Levon Helm

  “Then we got tired of the motel, and I went house hunting and found Big Pink. It was a pink suburban-looking split-level with three bedrooms and a long view of Overlook Mountain. It came with a hundred acres of woods and fields and had a pond. So Richard, Garth, and I moved in. Robbie rented a house on the Glasco Turnpike in Woodstock with his beautiful French girlfriend, Dominique. She was a journalist whom Robbie had met during Bob’s tour. I think they got married right after that.

  “Big Pink was our clubhouse. Richard did all the cooking, Garth washed all the dishes (he didn’t trust anyone else to do them because he wanted them clean), and I took the garbage to the dump, personally, and kept the fireplace going with split logs. That’s how we settled in. We were paid a weekly retainer by Bob, and it was the first time in our lives where we had a chance to relax. We’d been on the road nonstop for six years at that point, and for the first time we didn’t have to play joints to stay alive anymore. Then I got Hamlet the dog from Bob Dylan. Hamlet was as big as a bear—a big dog. Albert and Bob had paid about a grand apiece for these pedigreed German dogs that had come from the most illustrious bloodlines in the world, but something went wrong. Hamlet was more like a standard poodle mixed with a German shepherd and a giant shorthaired terrier.

  “Bob was having a hard time with the dog one day when I was over at his house. The dog was bigger than Bob, and Bob already had a Saint Bernard pulling him around. I stayed out of that one, but Hamlet and Bob were having some trouble. Bob said, ‘Please, Rick, take this dog back to the house with you. No, man, I insist...’ I didn’t want anything bad to happen, and Bob had kicked Hamlet out of the house, so he was living outside. So I took him back to Big Pink. We went to the vet—he didn’t care—and I had him groomed. He looked so great that the next time Sara Dylan saw Hamlet, she wanted him back! But he was our dog by then. He slept on the carpet by the stove through most of the basement tapes music and most of the Big Pink rehearsals as well. That dog heard a lot of music.

  “When we’d gotten comfortable, we cleaned out the basement of Big Pink, and Garth put together a couple of microphones and connected them to a little two-track reel-to-reel tape recorder, and that was our studio. For ten months, from March to December 1967, we all met down in the basement and played for two or three hours a day, six days a week. That was it, man. We wrote a lot of songs in that basement. It was incredible!”

  While the boys were recording, Rick was busy expending the kind of restless energy it took to convince Albert Grossman that it was time for us to go out on our own. It helped a lot that Sally Grossman loved the band and was really on our side. Toward the end of 1967, when Bob Dylan made it clear to Albert that he wouldn’t be touring anytime soon, Albert took it upon himself to get the boys a record deal. They cut a demo, which I’ve never even heard. Robbie said it was terrible anyway. Warner Bros. was interested: Label chief Mo Ostin had sold a lot of records with Peter, Paul, and Mary, and now Albert was telling him we were going to be even bigger. But Capitol Records jumped at the deal while Mo was out of town or something, and Albert said OK. That’s when Rick called me at Mary Cavette’s in Memphis, where I was still watching TV and waiting.

  Rick remembers: “I call Levon and tell him we signed the deal with Capitol. ‘They wanna give us a couple hundred thou, Lee. Better come and get your share!’

  “He says, ‘What’s the deal?’ So I tell him it’s for ten albums over so many years.

  “Levon says, ‘I think it’s a dirty goddamn deal. I don’t like it, but I’ll be there anyway on the next plane. Maybe we can fix it.’

  “‘Do you need an airplane ticket?’

  “He says, ‘No, but I’ll call and let you know what time my plane lands. Tell the boys I’m coming up.’

  “And that’s how Levon came back into the fold.”

  Chapter Six

  SOMETHING TO FEEL

  It’s a wicked life

  But what the hell

  Everybody’s got to eat.

  —‘GOIN’ TO ACAPULCO,”

  FROM THE BASEMENT TAPES

  “Levon and his friend Kirby had come to Memphis and lived with me,” Mary Cavette remembers. “We were like Three’s Company, but I was the only one with a job. At the time—this was 1967—I was trying to straighten Levon out, because he’d been a musician for eight years and didn’t even live in the daytime world the rest of us inhabited. So I wanted to find him a real job—like an eight-to-five?—but he wasn’t about to do that. Then I sent him out for a haircut, ‘cause his hair was so long that he was unemployable, and he came back scalped. We all had a good laugh over that until his hair grew out again.

  “Levon was biding his time and resting. I could see what he was doing. He slept all day and watched TV in between. I said to him, ‘You better watch out, Lavon; they’ll send you to Vietnam.’ And he said, ‘Forget it, I’m not going. I’ve watched the six o’clock news every night for six months, and I haven’t seen one Pepsi machine in Vietnam. No way am I going over there.’”

  Then Rick called and said to come to Woodstock. They were all in the room, and I spoke to everyone. I couldn’t believe that my band was going to get back together. Everyone sounded a little older and wiser. Garth told me they had a dog, and the woods were right outside the front door. It felt great when I heard him say, “See ya soon, Levon.”

  I took the Cavette sisters to the Mid-South Fair and then flew up to New York, where the boys picked me up in Richard’s black, fourdoor, slick-as-hell ’47 Olds—the one with the long back. We drove north on the New York State Thruway for a couple of hours. During the ride, Rick told me the whole story: six months on the road with Bob, meeting people, Bob’s motorcycle accident, Peter Yarrow’s movie, moving to the country, working on songs in the basement. And I had to tell ’em about the adventures Kirby and I had been through, from Louisiana to California and back again.

  We got off at an exit marked Saugerties. Then west on Route 212 until we turned right onto Pine Lane. It was late on an autumn afternoon, the maples and oaks were glowing orange and red, and I couldn’t take my eyes off Overlook Mountain and the rolling terrain. We’d driven by the Catskills a few times on the way to the Peppermint Lounge, but this was my first time in the Woodstock area. From that first day, the Catskills reminded me of the Ozarks and the Arkansas hill country. I had a shock of recognition. Going to Woodstock felt like going home.

  We got to the house. The boys were renting it for $125 a month. It was furnished, with a knickknack shelf in the living room and lots of pictures on the wall, plus a neon beer sign Richard had liberated from some tavern. Garth had set up a music room downstairs in the cinderblock basement, with an upright piano, a stand-up bass, a drum kit, amplifiers, and some microphones connected to a Revox tape recorder through an Altec Lansing mixer, so they could record in stereo. Garth had positioned one of the microphones on top of the hot-water heater. I think there was also an oil furnace in the room.

  Well, I found a place to bunk, and we went out to dinner at Deanie’s, a wood-burnin’ Woodstock institution “Known From Coast to Coast,” as the sign said. The place was full of musicians, artists, writers—it was the local watering hole. There was a line of people waiting to eat, but when we walked in the boys were greeted like old friends, and we got a good table right away. By the way we were welcomed at Deanie’s, you could tell that music was more in favor in Woodstock than in other places.

  Woodstock proper was a picturesque town with a white steepled church, a village green, and a flagpole. At night the only sign of life was the red neon sign that flashed DRUGS in the window of the Colonial Pharmacy. We thought that was pretty funny, that sign.

  At some point they broke the news to me that Richard had become the band’s drummer during my absence. And the thing about it was, Richard was an incredible drummer. He played loosey-goosey, a little behind the beat, and it really swung. (Later, when we were playing shows, Richard would hit the high-hat so hard the cymbal would break.)

  Knowing R
ichard, I shouldn’t have been surprised at this, but I was amazed how good he’d become. Without any training, he’d do these hard left-handed moves and piano-wise licks, priceless shit—very unusual. So I was coming back into a situation where I heard what Richard was accomplishing and had to say, “Hell, Richard plays drums better than me on this one. We better leave it that way.” That’s how we got to have two drummers in the band. I just realized that my mandolin playing was going to have to improve if I was to have anything to do onstage while Richard played drums.

  It’s late 1967. The boys told me that they’d been working with Bob on songs and demos since March. He started coming over as soon as he’d recovered from his injury, usually at the same time every afternoon, and they’d all go downstairs and play. “Like going to work,” Richard said. In the morning they’d go to Bob’s house because he was churning ’em out—ten songs a week for months—writing for his next album. Bob had taken up painting, and all over his house there were canvases of musicians playing guitars. In the afternoons and evenings they’d go back to Big Pink and play for fun in the basement, writing songs for other musicians to cover. Garth’s Revox was used to record these demos, which were sent to Bob’s music publisher in New York.

  Some of the songs already cut had been cowritten by Bob, Richard, and Rick. They had a typewriter set up in Big Pink’s kitchen, and Bob might sit down and type a few lines. Then he’d wander off, and Richard would sit down and finish the verse. Dylan and Rick Danko wrote “This Wheel’s on Fire.” Richard Manuel and Bob cowrote “Tears of Rage.” They played me some of these tapes, and I could barely believe the level of work they’d been putting out. The demos they cut with Bob included “You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere,” “Nothing Was Delivered,” and “The Mighty Quinn (Quinn the Eskimo).” There were a bunch of little songs that Bob had written that were kind of funny, like “Tiny Montgomery,” “Please Mrs. Henry,” and “Open the Door, Homer,” which became “Open the Door, Richard” when they got around to recording it. I could tell that hanging out with the boys had helped Bob to find a connection with things we were interested in: blues, rockabilly, R&B. They had rubbed off on him a little. There was a great rock and roll song called “Odds and Ends,” and “Crash on the Levee (Down in the Flood)” had Bob duetting with Garth’s organ. Garth even sang on a couple of songs called “Even If She Looks Like a Pig, Pts. 1 & 2.”

  The boys had also discovered how to write songs. Bob Dylan had opened it up for ’em. When I reported for duty in the basement the day after I arrived in Woodstock, they were working on “Yazoo Street Scandal.” Richard was playing drums. It was the first time I’d heard him, and I was just in awe. It was like a force, and he immediately became my favorite drummer. I played some mandolin and sang the vocal. That’s how I started to work my way back in. I was uptight about playing, because I’d been away from it for so long, but soon they had me working so hard, there wasn’t anything else to do.

  Richard was writing and singing up a storm. We cut his “Orange Juice Blues” (also called “Blues for Breakfast”), with Garth playing some honky-tonk tenor sax. Richard sang and cowrote (with Robbie) “Katie’s Been Gone,” and Garth overlayed some organ. Rick and Robbie did a great song called “Bessie Smith.”

  Around this time we started to work on our vocals. One of the things we’d always loved about soul music was the way groups like the Staple Singers and the Impressions would stack those individual voices on top of one another, each voice coming in at a different time until you got this blend that was just magic. So when we cut a song called “Ain’t No More Cane” in our basement, we tried to do it like that, with different voices. I’d heard this song all my life: My daddy taught it to me, and the legendary bluesman Leadbelly had also recorded a version of it called “Go Down, Hannah.” Our version started with me singing the first verse. Then Richard did the second, Robbie sang the third, and Rick brought it home. We all sang harmony on the chorus, and Garth layered his accordion over everything. Richard played the drums, so I played mandolin. That recording of “Ain’t No More Cane” was a breakthrough. With those multiple voices and jumbled instruments we discovered our sound.

  That Thanksgiving a few of us were invited to the Traums’ house for holiday dinner. Happy and Artie Traum were keystones of the Woodstock music family and warm, hospitable people. I’ll never forget my first Thanksgiving in Woodstock, one of the best dinners I’ve had in my life.

  There was contract fever in the air. Bob had recently signed a new five-year deal with his label, and now it was going to be our turn. Bob had left town in October to record his next album in Nashville. When he came back after Thanksgiving we cut “Nothing Was Delivered” and “Long Distance Operator,” which Richard sang. I sang “Don’t Ya Tell Henry,” and we all worked on an unfinished song by Richard and Robbie called “Ruben Remus.”

  So we had this body of work, music from Bob’s house and music from our house. The music from Bob’s house had been cut in Nashville with session players there. It was supposed to be overdubbed by Robbie and Garth back in Woodstock when he came home, but when they heard the tapes they declined the opportunity to enhance the already perfect tracks. The music from our house... well, maybe you know the story. Bob’s demo tapes leaked out from his publishers and the musicians they sent them to, and began to be widely bootlegged, initially under the title Great White Wonder. It had been eighteen months since Dylan’s last album, and his fans were happy to hear what their idol had been doing during his rural exile. Garth Hudson’s funky two-track tapes became the “basement tapes” of legend and renown. (No one I know except Garth knows exactly how many songs were recorded, but Rick believes the best of the material hasn’t even begun to surface.)

  There was another recording session in our basement around this time. The Bauls of Bengal were a family of itinerant street troubadours that Albert Grossman had met on a visit to India. These Bauls and their late father had played for him all night in Calcutta, so Albert invited them to Bearsville. They were put up in an apartment he reserved for guests in a converted barn down the road from Albert’s house. They were real gypsies and real players, happy to get high and sing all night about rivers and goddesses and play their tablas, harmonium, and fiddles. They eventually made an album and even opened for Paul Butterfield—by then living in Woodstock and a client of Albert’s—at Town Hall in New York City. I remember Butterfield laughing about that show, because these crazy Bauls sat down and played for three hours, and Paul said that Albert was very upset.

  Anyway, we invited ’em to Big Pink one night. The Bauls had long black hair braided to the waist and were wearing cowboy hats they’d picked up on the drive east from California, where they’d arrived direct from Bengal. (Before heading east in a beat-up old van, they’d played the Fillmore West on a bill with the Byrds.) They loved the bubbling beer sign over our fireplace, and I played checkers with some of ’em, and we were laughing pretty hard. I was smoking a chillum with Luxman Das, and I said, “Man, that’s some good weed.”

  He smiled and said, “Very good, but nothing like my father used to smoke—little hashish, little tobacco, little head of snake.”

  I said, “Wait a minute. Did you say ‘snake head’?”

  And Luxman laughed. “Yes, by golly! Chop off head of snake, chop into tiny pieces, put in chillum with little hash, little tobacco. Oh, boy! Very good—first-class high!”

  “Snake?” I pressed him. “Are you sure you mean snake?”

  Now they’re all laughing. “Yes! Very good! Head of snake!”

  Charles Lloyd was visiting—I think his 1966 album Forest Flower had just passed the million mark in sales—and he came over with his saxophone. The Bauls wanted to jam, Garth wanted to record, and Rick and I were maybe gonna sit in. So we moved the cushions from the living-room sofa downstairs, and the Bauls sat in a circle so they could hear one another and began to play their Indian soul thing. A minute later, they were already wailing in their own language; in their own world, Bubb
a. Charles and Rick and I looked at one another and thought, No way. So we got up and let the Bauls play. Hours later, Garth’s tape machine was still rolling. These tapes were released, years later, as Bengali Bauls at Big Pink.

  Everybody around Woodstock in those days loved the Bauls. They were close to the bone of what music should be all about: ecstatic, unrelenting. They told us they loved Woodstock too because there was all this forest and no tigers to eat the children and goats. Their presence can best be felt if you look at the photo of two of them—the brothers Luxman and Purna Das—posing with Bob Dylan on the cover of his new album, which came out the following month: John Wesley Harding.

  In early 1968 Rick Danko—our best businessman—was really pushing Albert to get us a record contract. It was do or die for us. We’d finished our work on Bob’s movie Eat the Document, which was then rejected by ABC-TV. We were retired as a road band and were focused about what we wanted to do with our time. We signed a management contract with Albert, and a lot of paperwork happened. I had an attorney in Arkansas who negotiated for us, but Albert had a lot of power, and we didn’t really have much leeway. Not all of it went the way I’d wanted it to, but it was so great the band was getting back together.

  On January 20, 1968, we drove down to Manhattan and played behind Bob at a memorial tribute to Woody Guthrie at Carnegie Hall. We’re crashing through the back doors of the hall with our gear, and an old man guarding backstage says, “Hey, what group is this?”

  “The Crackers,” I told him off the top of my head.