by Levon Helm
The single was “Time to Kill”/“The Shape I’m In,” and it did OK, but in San Francisco one of the FM stations started playing a bootlegged tape of us doing “Don’t Do It” in concert, and people thought it was our new record. I know Stage Fright disappointed some who felt it lacked that one killer song that could tie it all together. In San Francisco, someone wrote that “Don’t Do It” was that missing link.
Stage Fright was a hit record anyway. I think it was one of our biggest. We went on the road for the next year to support it, and I recall these as being some of the best performances we ever gave. Richard was singing beautifully, while Garth alternated his wild organ solos with sax on “Great Divide” and accordion on “Rockin’ Chair.” Rick was mastering the fretless bass, which gave the rhythm section a different feel, and “Stage Fright” was a new showpiece for him.
Rick: “Suddenly that summer we found ourselves playing these huge spaces: Wembley Stadium in London, baseball parks where I looked up in the stands while Levon was singing ‘Cripple Creek’ and saw the whole third tier rocking eight feet in either direction. There were visions of catastrophe, people getting hurt. ‘Uh, Robbie, maybe it’s time to play a couple of slow ones...’
“Another time a beer company gave us fifty thousand dollars to play their summer festival at Harvard Stadium in Cambridge, Massachusetts. We were supposed to play for twelve thousand fans seated in the end zone of this football field, but it only cost a buck to get in, and the entire city of Cambridge came to hear us. I mean, sixty thousand showed up, and we could see there were more people behind us than in front of us. A lot of these people couldn’t see and were real mad, while the people in front of us were going wild. Then that big second tier started to rock. I went over to Levon and whispered, ‘Let’s do a couple of donkey songs and get the hell out of here!’
“I think we did ‘I Shall Be Released’ and made a beeline for the limousines, but then we saw thousands of people running toward us like they were making for the goal line. You could feel this huge crowd just merging toward us. Security melted away. So we got back onstage real quick and played a slow one to take them out of that rage place they were in. Our usual encore that summer was ‘Rag Mama Rag,’ but it would’ve been a disaster; if we’d played a couple of loud rock and roll songs, it would’ve exploded. We had to play it cool so people could walk out of there peacefully.
“Another time that summer [July 10, 1970], we had Miles Davis open for us at the Hollywood Bowl. The show was sold out, and they gave us a list of people who could open, and we chose Miles because we all loved Sketches of Spain, right? I don’t think we’d heard his more recent material.
“Anyway, backstage we had a visit from ‘Dr. Feelgood.’ All the musicians knew him, because he’d come by, and if you were feeling bad he gave you a vitamin B-twelve shot. Who the fuck knows what was in there? He’d come to my room, give me a shot, I’d be feeling incredible, then he’d take out a suitcase full of precious gems and try to sell me diamonds! Perhaps that night he was trying to sell Levon a big ruby or something, because Levon doesn’t even remember we ever played with Miles. There was no telling what was the true content of that shot!
“I heard Miles playing, so I went into the audience after a while, and Miles had twenty thousand people crouched down. His electric band was pouring fire into the crowd, and these kids were, like, cowering under this onslaught. Miles had these big wraparound bug-eyed shades, and he had his back turned to the crowd, and he was playing and scaring the shit out of the audience. But he never took them over the edge, and that’s why he was a master, an outrageous artist. He took our crowd to a place they’d never been before. And we had to follow this. So we came out and played one of the worst shows we ever did. I mean, man! I think I bought a few diamonds myself that night. And of course someone taped the show or stole the board tape, and soon we had our own little bootleg problem in the form of a white-label LP stenciled The Band Live at the Hollywood Bowl. The damn thing even got a good review in Rolling Stone.
“Everybody knew Dr. Feelgood in California. Maybe it was endorphins in there.... Eventually I knew I couldn’t keep feeling that good and live. It’s against the law to feel that good.”
My memory of that summer isn’t as clear as Rick’s, but I remember some highlights, like playing for two hours at Forest Hills, where they’d booed me and Robbie for daring to back up Bob Dylan. There was some satisfaction when we played the encore, “Rag Mama Rag,” and the whole crowd got up on its chairs and danced. Then we did a little tour of Canada with Janis Joplin and the Full Tilt Boogie Band, consisting of some former latter-day members of the Hawks (John Till, who’d been in the Rockin’ Revols with Richard Manuel, and a great piano player, Rick Bell) whom Albert Grossman had hired away from Ronnie and put on the road with Janis. Oh, Jesus, when Ronnie finally caught up with us, he started laying into Albert: “Goddammit, it wasn’t enough that you stole The Band from me, you sumbitch. What the fuck was I supposed to do? I was still in the bars! Now you got Ricky and John. Every time I get a good band together, are you gonna steal ’em?” Ronnie and Albert didn’t come to blows, but it wasn’t all that pleasant either.
When we weren’t on the road we tried to keep working. Jesse Winchester was doing another record. I played on John and Beverley Martyn’s album Stormbringer, and most of us played on John Simon’s record as well. We went back out on the road that fall, playing mostly in the South. I think that was when we played one of our greatest shows, at Kiel Auditorium in St. Louis.
Mary Cavette recalls: “Levon always kept in touch with his people back home. He was always tearing back to Arkansas in one of his Corvettes, and we’d see each other from time to time. Next thing we knew, of course, he was a big star on the cover of Time magazine. We were all so proud of him, and a little shocked as well. Was this our Lavon?
“But everybody in Marvell always knew the brass ring was waiting for Lavon, so no one was too surprised. When The Band played in St. Louis, I flew in from Memphis, and Diamond and the family drove in from Springdale. It was very exciting: hotels, limousines, the bright lights. It was really the first time that people from Arkansas understood how big they’d become. But I remember the concert was great. We all sat down in front, and Robbie dedicated “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down” to us. Lavon sang, and it was just great. They played that Little Richard song [“Slippin’ and Slidin’ “] at the end, and it brought the house down, believe me. We all looked up at Lavon as he was leaving the stage and waving, and we all felt so proud we could burst.”
Late in April 1971 Albert Grossman’s office announced that we would play a European tour that spring. A show at London’s Royal Albert Hall sold out in four hours with no advertising, so they added another the next night, and it sold out too. We weren’t that eager to go, but the deal was that Capitol picked up some of the expenses. We started in Germany, playing Hamburg, Munich, Vienna, and Frankfurt. Got a pretty good reception too. I rented a black 911 Porsche and drove it to the next date, Paris, with Ed Anderson, one of the guys on our crew. I’m on the autobahn, cruising at 105, wishing my boyhood friend Fireball Carter could see this, when a police Mercedes blew past me doing maybe 130, blue light blinking. We also got a big kick out of listening to “Rag Mama Rag” over Armed Forces Radio. Then we crossed the Rhine and hit the French border at Nancy. The gendarmes took me and Ed for dope smugglers and had us about one door away from the rubber glove room when I heard them discussing their union. So I whipped out my musicians’ union card—Memphis Local 71—and that cleared it up. I told them I was a workingman like them, and they sent us on our way with a wave. (The real miracle of that road trip was that we found our hotel in Paris.)
We did a few press conferences, which got a little embarrassing in Sweden because we were apolitical, and the issue of American war resisters who’d fled to Sweden was the hot topic of the day. The Stockholm press is peppering us with questions, and I look at Richard, who’s trying not to laugh, and Garth is in agony,
and what could we say except that we hated the war as much as anyone. Then some reporter would ask another question about the peace negotiations between Mr. Henry Kissinger and Mr. Le Due Tho, and finally I had to say, “Look, fellas, these other guys in the band are from Canada, and they don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. We came over here to play some music, and if any of you wants to buy a ticket, you’re welcome at the show. Thank you very much.” And that was it. None of us ever thought to write a song about all the shit that was going on back then: war, revolution, civil war, turmoil. Our songs were trying to take you someplace else.
We finished that Euro tour with two sellouts at Royal Albert Hall in Kensington, London. The Hawks had been booed there last time out. Not this time. Take my word for it—pandemonium. They were on their feet and dancing from the first notes of “W. S. Walcott,” our opener in those days. That’s about when we started making “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down” segue smoothly into “Across the Great Divide.” And I remember Garth playing the solo on “Unfaithful Servant” with his little curved soprano sax, another one of his pawnshop finds.
We cut our next album, Cahoots, at Albert’s new Bearsville Studios during the summer of 1971. It was the first record to be made there, and they were still getting the bugs worked out of the place. Originally Bearsville was going to be a joint enterprise between Albert and The Band, an umbrella for various musical projects. That was the dream, according to my understanding, but this feeling of sharing and partner ship never developed. That’s when I decided to build a big old barn on my land to house a studio and home base for anything we needed to do. This project became my dream, and I was determined to see it come to life.
Bearsville was the first proper studio we’d cut in since Music From Big Pink, so we were a little rusty, and the music on Cahoots didn’t prove that memorable. The exception for me was “Life Is a Carnival,” which Rick Danko and I worked out music-wise and Robbie put to words. It was one of the last of those real good Band songs that came out of that workshop setting we liked. Rick and I worked on that song’s sprung rhythms for five days. Robbie was singing “Life is a carnival, believe it or not.” That was all he had, and we were all stymied until one day Richard came up with “two bits a shot.” That made the song. We kept trying different things with it and finally got it to a place where we could cut it.
Back then, we’d listen to Big Pink or hear a track from The Band on the radio and realize that we’d had the habit of mixing our records from the bottom. They sounded muddy to us on the car radio. So we got the idea to correct this by adding a high-end horn section to the track. That’s when we got legendary New Orleans producer Allen Toussaint to write a horn chart for “Life Is a Carnival.” Allen had just produced an album for Lee (“Working in a Coal Mine”) Dorsey, and we liked the way the different “voices” of his horns sounded. At the time Rick Danko was writing songs with singer Bobby Charles, who was from New Orleans, so I think Bobby made that connection to Mr. Toussaint for us.
I sang on Bob Dylan’s “When I Paint My Masterpiece,” that song’s official debut, since Bob didn’t release his own version for a couple of more months. We figured we couldn’t go wrong having one of Bob’s songs on the record. Bob himself had been virtually secluded since we’d played with him on the Isle of Wight almost two years earlier. I played mandolin and Garth the accordion to give it that “European tourist” flavor. Richard Manuel played the drums and sang with our neighbor Van Morrison on a raucous number cut in one take, “4% Pantomime.” This happened when Van came to Bearsville one night and began discussing the merits of scotch whiskey with Richard. (Four percent is the difference in alcohol content between Johnnie Walker Black and Johnnie Walker Red.) They acted out some lyrics Van wrote about management and a poker game, and Richard sang, “Oh, Belfast cowboy, can you call a spade a spade?” It was an extremely liquid session, Van and Richard were into it, and there was horror among the civilians at the studio when the two dead-drunk musicians argued about who would drive the other one home. Richard drove, and I think he made it. Lord knows he wrecked a lot of cars that year.
We tried to get the jazz arranger Gil Evans to work with us on a number called “Moon Struck One,” but it didn’t happen. Libby came into the studio and sang with me on “River Hymn,” the first time anyone had ever heard a woman’s voice on a Band record.
It wasn’t a good time for us to be working together, or even to be working. Richard simply stopped writing and for all intents retired. Garth didn’t get much inspiration from the material Robbie was bringing in. I’d shot my wad with “Life Is a Carnival.”
Rick Danko recalls: “Cahoots was when I did a lot of work in the studio for the first time; my first real involvement in recording. I multitracked my voice for the first time on a tune called ‘Volcano,’ so it was a time of experimenting for me: arranging, producing, getting involved that way. Richard seemed to be tired of the whole thing. Levon wasn’t that interested either. I can’t emphasize how much success had changed everything. We were outrageous in our behavior, and it was impossible to get people in one place at one time. And when we did, it was hard to work because when we looked at one another and saw how wrecked we were, it was hard not to crack up.”
Sometime in this period Bobby Charles came up to Woodstock. He was a hellacious musician from Louisiana who’d written “See You Later Alligator” and had a record deal with Warner Bros. He was writing some songs with Rick Danko while The Band was between albums.
One late afternoon I was studying the hooks on some old Ray Charles records when the phone rang. I heard Rick Danko’s voice saying, “Levon, I’ve had an accident.” My heart jumped, but Rick went on, “Hey, man, like I’m OK and everything, but can you come quick and”—here his voice went into a James Bond conspiracy mode—“bring your Jeep?”
I jumped in the Jeep and raced over to the scene of the crime. Rick and Bobby Charles pointed out a big dead deer lying at the side of the road, where it had landed after Rick had rammed it. Rick was saying, “Hurry, man, before someone sees us. We’re gonna throw this son of a bitch in the back of the Jeep, take it out in your woods, Levon, and dress it.” I could hear the meat-cutter fever in Rick’s voice.
“Enough good venison here to last the whole year,” Bobby said.
So we loaded up the deer and headed for the woods behind my house. Rick and Bobby rode on my tailgate so their out-of-season kill was hidden. Back in the trees we stopped under what seemed like a nice limb, maybe nine feet off the ground, perfect for stringing up the deer and cleaning and quartering it. I got out of the Jeep with some rope and my hatchet. “Let me cut a sprout for you,” I told Rick. “You can stick it through the ankle tendons and hoist it up in the tree. I guess about this size ought to do it.” For a model I held up an old handle from a windshield squeegee that had fallen apart. It was maybe a quarter inch or so in diameter.
Rick grabbed the handle. “No, man, don’t bother. This’ll work fine.” He took the old handle and the dry rope and started working them through the animal’s tendons. Then he wrapped the rope over the tree limb, and he and Bobby Charles hauled the deer up in the air and tied the rope to the tree. Rick took out his hunting knife, ready to operate. “I haven’t done this since I left the meat market in Simcoe,” he said.
“Lotta good venison here,” Bobby Charles confirmed.
I got back in the Jeep, put the high beams on all that fresh meat, and sat by the heater, content with my ringside seat. “I always enjoy watching a professional at work,” I told Rick. Bobby steadied the deer while Rick stabbed it and sliced down in a cutting motion. Just then the squeegee handle broke, and the huge deer fell out of the tree. Both boys jumped back, but—wham!—the deer’s hind hoof caught the side of Rick’s head. Rick was holding his head and staggering, Bobby was trying to hold him up, and I was in stitches in the jeep. I hopped out and helped Bobby steady the butcher on his feet. I checked Rick’s head. The hoof had hit him on its smooth side, so there was n
o cut, but Rick was stunned. “I’m all right,” he repeated, but his expression betrayed him.
While Bobby guided Rick through his recovery, I cut and trimmed a sprout the right length and size. Then Richard Manuel showed up. I started to howl as I told Richard the story, and soon we were staggering with laughter and holding each other up. “Sounds like a new chapter from the goddamn Deerslayer,” Richard said, and the two of us went into spasms. We knew we’d never let Danko live this down. I mean, this was going into the damn lore.
“Gimme that stick, Levon,” Rick growled. “You guys will probably enjoy this more than most when it’s cooked. Meanwhile, give me a hand, Bobby.”
Richard and I sat in the Jeep while Rick and Bobby attached the new sprout to the deer and got it back up in the tree. All daylight had faded to darkness, and the autumnal chill was falling fast, but the show was just starting, Richard and I figured we had front-row seats. All we needed was the popcorn.
Now the deer skinning could begin. Richard called out encouragement—“Be careful with that knife, son”—but lost in his self-imposed mission of supplying fresh meat to all the hungry musicians of Woodstock, Rick was ignoring us. As he was pulling off the deerskin, big clumps of fur came off in a drifting cloud. It was quite a scene.
Finally the skin was off. Only thing left to do was to gut the animal and butcher the meat. But Rick was trained as a butcher and had never worked in a slaughterhouse, so he was having trouble getting the deer’s insides to fall out because they were still attached at the deer’s rectum. Rick was cutting and pulling while Bobby coached and Richard and I cheered them on. Rick cussed out loud and pulled a little harder, and suddenly the deer’s ass tore loose with an awful sound and spewed liquid deer shit with the force of a garden hose all over the ground, over the Jeep, over Bobby, and, most of all, over Rick.