This Wheel's on Fire

by Levon Helm

  At that point Bob Dylan walked out in a big white hat that seemed to glow under the spotlight. Black leather jacket, polka-dot shirt. He plugged right in, said hello, and stormed into “Baby, Let Me Follow You Down.” I looked out from behind the drums. The cameras were off. Technicians climbed down from the booms, and the soundpeople took off their headphones. I hoped that our boys taping the show in the mobile truck parked outside the hall were rolling, but to tell you the truth, I just didn’t care that much. Bob knew what he was doing, and it wasn’t much skin off my nose. Dylan’s people were stationed at the side of the stage to make sure there was no filming.

  Bob’s guitar was turned way up, so I just took it fast. Things certainly got lively. Bob shouted out the lyrics, feinted back from the mike like he used to when we played this in 1965, and danced around the stage a little. In the audience: pandemonium. I mean, people were excited to have Bob there.

  To cool it down, he cut right into “Hazel,” from Planet Waves. Then farther back in time with “I Don’t Believe You,” also from Dylan and the Hawks. Mmm, good performance. Bob was hot and unusually commanding. I looked over at those cameras; they were still cold.

  Two more numbers left. The technicians scrambled for their headsets, the cameras swung around, the lights went on, and it was movie time again. We did “Forever Young,” and when Bob finished he swung back into “Baby, Let Me Follow You Down.” Surprised, we played along, figuring that Bob realized we were missing something good by not having any of the old rock and roll on film. At the side of the stage Bill Graham shouted down Bob’s people, who were trying to get the cameras turned off so the big finale could be filmed with Bob in it. So they had this fight during the reprise, and you could hear Bill yelling, “Fuck you! Roll the fucking cameras! Roll ’em!!!” Meanwhile, Bob’s smiling and we are too, so we just kept it up and hoped for the best.

  Everyone came out for the finale, “I Shall Be Released.” Ringo Starr sat down at Richard’s drum kit, and Ron Wood plugged in as well. The night was pretty much over for Richard by then, and the damn cameras couldn’t even find him during the verses he sang. When he missed a cue, Bob jumped in and sang the verse. All our guests sang backup, and it was a nice moment. Bill Graham tried to get the governor out onstage, but Jerry wanted to stay in the wings with actress/ singer Ronee Blakely, so Bill threw my towel at him.

  It hadn’t really hit me that when the song was over, so was The Band.

  The stage cleared of our guests, Ringo Starr and I sat there for a second, looking at each other. The Last Waltz was over. Relieved, I figured it was time to play a little music, so me and Ring started up. Dr. John came out, then Stephen Stills and Carl Radle, Eric Clapton’s bassist, then Neil Young, Garth, and Rick Danko. Bill Graham dragged Clapton out and strapped him into his guitar for the jam, and Ronnie Wood came out. We jammed for maybe thirty minutes, judging by the tapes. Finally The Band came back on, and we did our last song, “Don’t Do It.”

  When it was over, we were all spent. “Thank you,” Richard told the crowd. “Good night.” And then, “Good-bye.” I looked at the clock. It was two o’clock in the morning. All the cameramen were slapping one another on the back. Some people were crying at the demise of The Band and placing bouquets on the stage. I got up, stretched, lit a cigarette, shook some hands, and left the stage. In the dressing room was an envelope with a couple of thousand dollars in it. Bill Graham had given a bonus to each member of The Band, just because he was so happy The Last Waltz was over and had gone down well.

  It was one of those nights, and no one wanted to let go of it. By 3:00 A.M. our guests were just finishing the turkey dinner we’d laid on at the Miyako Hotel, and the Osaka Room turned into a party. Dr. John and Paul Butterfield were jamming with Steve Stills. I visited with actor Brad Dourif, a neighbor from Woodstock, who’d just had a big success in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. The Arkansawyers were whooping it up while Don Tyson handed out Razorback T-shirts to one and all. Bob Dylan was sitting with some friends from Minnesota, telling reporters that he was already nostalgic for The Band. “After all,” Bob said, “I’ve been with those guys a long time.”

  John Simon came and sat down, and I asked him how he thought the recording had gone. John mentioned that Bob Dylan’s lawyer had gone into the truck immediately after the show and seized the tapes Bob was on, so there would have to be negotiations. I thought that was pretty funny.

  I wasn’t destined to be part of the fun and games. I left the party around four and went back to the hotel. Amy and Ezra were in San Francisco with me and were sound asleep in my suite. I woke the babysitter and told her she could go. As the sun rose over San Francisco, I thought about the whole story of The Band. The original idea, as I recalled it, had been for us to use Bearsville Studios as a sheltered environment for making American music, using all the traditions we’d learned over the years. That dream had died amid the old divide and conquer mentality. My only hope was that it wasn’t too late to live that dream and somehow keep the people who loved The Band on our side. Even then Henry Glover was helping me put something together. We were going to try to make my own dream of having my barn replace Bearsville come true.

  When the kids woke up, I took them over to F.A.O. Schwarz and said, pick any toy in the place. That’s how we celebrated the end of The Last Waltz. A few days later I caught a plane to New York.

  The period after The Last Waltz was a time of real scrambling for me. I was determined to get on to the next thing, fearful of being left behind in a competitive business. Henry Glover made a deal with ABC Records and started putting together a good band for an album and a big tour. I told Henry that I’d always had a fantasy of joining Booker T. and the MGs, for my money the best band in the country; legendary studio musicians who’d played on more hit records than you could count. Henry said he’d see what he could do.

  Then it was back to Shangri-La to work on Islands, our last album for Capitol. It was really more a collection of odd pieces than an album, but it did fulfill those awful contractual obligations. I got to sing on “Ain’t That a Lot of Love” (made famous by Sam and Dave) and a couple of others, and Richard did himself proud on “Right as Rain” and “Let the Night Fall.” We also stuck “Georgia” on there as well. The title song, written by Garth and Rick, turned out to be an instrumental because Robbie never came up with lyrics for it. When Capitol released Islands in March 1977, it got to No. 64 and disappeared, the poorest showing by any of our albums.

  At the same time, Rick Danko was working on his solo album, recording partly at Shangri-La, so things were busy at the clubhouse. Rick was writing songs with Bobby Charles and Emmett Grogan, and using the local musicians: Eric Clapton, Ronnie Wood, Blondie Chaplin from the Beach Boys. It was the usual constant atmosphere of work-as-party.

  Then there was The Last Waltz. Within a few weeks of the show, we heard that English movie mogul Sir Lew Grade had offered three million dollars for our farewell movie, sight unseen. Scorsese issued a statement that if The Band wasn’t satisfied with the footage, it would never be released, and would be the most expensive home movie ever made. They’d shot 160,000 feet of film, but problems began to mount as soon as they started to screen this material. The sound track was poorly recorded and had to be overdubbed and remixed for the movie and the album. Then it was decided that the whole thing was too lily-white and missing something crucial, so the Staple Singers were recruited to join us on an MGM soundstage in Culver City to record another version of “The Weight.” The San Francisco version had come too late in the show, and my performance was, to say the least, less than magical.

  It was great to hear Mavis Staples singing the verses of “The Weight” on that stage. The Staples had been the original inspiration for The Band’s vocal blend, so it was more than appropriate to hear Mavis and her father blending their voices with ours. Mavis Staples was so awe-inspiring that after the first take I left the drums and approached her. “Hey, Mavis,” I begged, “you’ve got to lighten u
p a little. I mean, don’t go blowing us off the stage.” She laughed. Her voice and presence were as powerful as Aretha’s, maybe more so. Later, during a break, Richard Manuel asked Pop Staples if he knew why the French people went to Canada and the black people went to America. Pop said no, he didn’t. Richard told him it was because Canada and America had a bet and Canada lost.

  We also did another version of “Evangeline” with Emmylou Harris, as dry-ice machines turned the still air of the studio into a gauzy fog to soften the images and conjure up the bayou atmosphere of the song. She represented our homage to country music, joining the other genres we’d tried to pay tribute to in The Last Waltz. Finally The Band was filmed playing “The Last Waltz Suite” by ourselves as a mostly string ensemble: Richard on dobro, me on mandolin, Rick on bass, Garth on accordion, and Robertson playing a harp guitar.

  When we finished on the soundstage, that was it. We thanked the Staples and Emmylou, and didn’t discuss the fact that this was the last time we would appear on a stage together. That day, it really was over. We done led the horse to the barn and took off the saddle.

  Anyone who ever saw The Last Waltz understood from my attitude during the postconcert interviews (filmed at Shangri-La) that I was pretty pissed off about the whole situation. The idea was for us to sit around the campfire and shoot the shit about the good old days, maybe pick up some instruments, let the good times roll. The interviews took place over the course of a few days and generally started after midnight. I already had a bad attitude when I realized the cameras had completely ignored the spirit of the event. So Scorsese sits me down at a table, and they turn on the camera, and I know he wants to hear about the Midnight Ramble and the medicine shows and Sonny Boy Williamson on King Biscuit Time, but all I’m thinking is what a sin it is to take a good group from productivity to oblivion.

  “Uh, Levon,” Scorsese began, “Is there anything you wanna, like, start off on?”

  I glared at him. “You’re the one that’s supposed to be asking this fuckin’ shit,” I told him. He was taken aback. He shifted his papers very nervously. And I said, “I mean, this shit don’t mean nothing to me.” I looked right at him. Nothing. I was just coarse and rude, country rude, because I was so damn angry. I believed then and I believe now that The Band is bigger than all of us.

  Eventually they got enough interviews, and it petered out. Richard later complained that he was so drunk at the time, he couldn’t remember being filmed. Garth was filmed at six o’clock in the morning, looking quite exhausted after being woken from a nap, and I know he was disgusted with the way he was depicted in the interview portion (although his remarks on the healing properties of music were actually the most eloquent sequence in the whole film).

  They would have these meetings that went on forever about all the business things that were going on. New publishing companies were being set up for The Last Waltz and our supposed new music for Warners. Noises were being made about Robbie wanting to buy out his fellow musicians’ shares of The Band. They wanted me to spend the rest of the year overdubbing The Last Waltz, and I told them to go to hell because I had my own record to do. In one of these big meetings about the fate of The Band, I finally had enough after yet another scheme was referred to by our accountant as a “genius idea.”

  I got up. “‘Genius,’ my ass,” I said. “There ain’t a genius within walking distance of this self-infatuated crowd.” No one said anything. “That’s it, boys, it’s too late, you’ve lost it. I’ll let you geniuses have it.” I said some other things too. I took the path of greatest resistance. I had an attitude because I was younger and a lot more willing to scrap. I left without beating the shit out of them, but I made the mistake of cussing ’em out so bad I had to leave town, and I also believe they later put the IRS on my trail. That’s what kind of people we’re talking about here. There ain’t but one answer for any of them sons of bitches—shoeshine or no—that didn’t lift a finger to keep The Band together in any kind of way: playing, writing, movie partners, whatever. We were a good team, and it was a shame to destroy it.

  So I left California, and postproduction on The Last Waltz went on without me. I promised ’em all I would stay out of the picture, give it a good leavin’ alone. I’d already contacted MGs bassist Donald “Duck” Dunn and former Hawk Fred Carter, Jr., about recording, and we finished getting up my building in Woodstock so we could record in it.

  Richard, Rick, and Garth stayed too long. Someone managed to convince them it would be a good idea to sell their publishing and their shares of The Band to Robbie Robertson. I doubt that the sale was in their best interests, but it was a clean break. They tried to see if I was interested in selling too, but I told my lawyer not to return their calls. So I never received any offer.

  Garth Hudson was right when he described music as medicine and musicians as possessing the power to heal. But if the doctor is going to make house calls, he’d better be prepared to play. When I’m a working musician, I feel like I’m successful no matter how big the show. If I’m not working, I feel useless as hell. As a drummer, I need a bassist and a guitar player to even begin thinking about playing music, so the next thing was to get a band that could play in the big leagues.

  The RCO All-Stars consisted of musicians who had all grown up along the Mississippi River: Booker T. Jones on keys, Duck Dunn on bass, and Steve Cropper on guitar. Fred Carter, Jr., flew out from Nashville to play some guitar. Paul Butterfield played harp, and Mac Rebennack played his trademark keyboards, guitar, and deep-gumbo percussion. The horns were Howard Johnson, Tom Malone, Lou Marini, and Alan Rubin. This lineup made its public debut on Saturday Night Live on March 19, 1977, and recorded the ten songs on Levon Helm and the RCO All-Stars that summer on twenty-four tracks at my house and at Shangri-La. We got a good cut on “Milk Cow Boogie” and “Rain Down Tears,” my favorite tracks on a pretty fair record. The rest was a cooperative effort. Mac, Fred Carter, and Booker T. all contributed tunes, Duck Dunn and I rearranged a couple of oldies, and we even got Chuck Berry’s “Havana Moon” in there as well. When I brought the tapes out to Shangri-La to mix, both Garth and Robbie contributed some accordion and guitar to Earl King’s “Sing, Sing, Sing.” After the tensions of working with The Band, the RCO All-Stars was just what we had in mind: a friendly, cooperative atmosphere in which to create music that people can have a good time with and maybe even dance to.

  We finished the album that fall and had a big party at my Woodstock barn in October to celebrate and play for our friends. The opening act featured six-and-a-half-year-old Amy Helm on vocals, with her eleven-year-old brother, Ezra Titus, on guitar. It was one of those classic golden Catskill autumn afternoons. The cider was cold and fresh, and the fried chicken was crispy. It felt like that dream had been realized. I had a hell of an album, and we’d booked a fifty-date tour through early 1978. Things looked pretty interesting.

  Just as the RCO All-Stars record came out, I collapsed. Kidney stones. Prostate gland. I wound up in the hospital. I told the doctors I’d been working on the album and tour, driving cross-country to check in at Shangri-La, then driving back east with stops in Arkansas along the way. I was burning both ends of the candle on both coasts and in the middle. For the first time in my life my wild ways caught up with me, and I was really ill. They told me I was lucky to be alive and insisted the tour be canceled. You can imagine what my heart did when I heard that fifty dates were out the window, how that felt. The doctors did promise that if I was real good, we could go play Japan later that year like we’d planned. We managed to salvage a couple of American dates: New Year’s Eve at the Palladium in New York and a single show before 37,500 at the Superdome in New Orleans during the 1978 Mardi Gras. But things were disorganized, and we played without rehearsals or soundchecks and took some disappointing reviews. The album sold about a quarter-million copies and stalled at No. 142. The RCO All-Stars were never able to develop the momentum we needed to continue as any kind of permanent organization, but it was fun while it
lasted. (Rick Danko’s solo LP got to No. 119 at around the same time.)

  I did a lot of press interviews, trying to keep up interest in the new band. But what the reporters wanted to know about was ... The Band. The official line was that we had a movie and a triple album coming out, and that we were gonna get together and record. A little more than a year after The Last Waltz, I was quoted in Rolling Stone regarding The Band:

  “‘We never played no fruit rock, no punk rock. We never wore dresses onstage or put no paint on our faces. We never blew up any bombs onstage. We didn’t suck off any snakes onstage. We didn’t wear tight pants or them big turquoise rings. We didn’t take a piss onstage or throw any TVs out the window that I can remember. But today the music business has gotten so it’s like Vietnam: a few guys making a lot of money, some guys getting cut up, and in five years ain’t much of it even gonna be worth a pinch of shit.’

  “Given The Band’s unerring taste and integrity,” the article continued, “its honest failures and its respected place in American musical culture, Helm’s growling carries a certain weight.”

  And that’s how I felt about the music business at the time, and in some ways still do.

  Warner Bros. released The Last Waltz as a film and three-LP album in April 1978. As far as I was concerned, the movie was a disaster.

  I’d had almost no contact with Robbie Robertson during the eighteen-month postproduction period on The Last Waltz. I’d heard on The Band grapevine that Robbie’s wife had thrown him out and that he’d moved into Marty Scorsese’s house on Mulholland Drive, where they lived the wild life of true Hollywood bachelors and blow buddies. Marty had the windows of the house blacked out and an air-filtration system installed so there was no need to see the sun or open the windows to breathe. Marty was editing The Last Waltz while Robbie worked on the soundtrack. They edited the movie to please themselves.