This Wheel's on Fire

by Levon Helm

  So J.D. returned to Arkansas to live with my sister Modena, and Sandy and I rented a house near Bearsville and tried to regroup. We had an album to do and gigs to play, so we invited Billy Preston into The Band. We’d known and loved this master musician—one of only two to play with both the Beatles and the Stones—for many years, and Rick and I had really dug his work on Ringo’s tour. Billy is a dancer, a showman who flashes lightning up onstage. His energy was just what we badly needed at that point, but then he had some legal trouble over in Malibu, where he has a ranch, and a California judge wouldn’t let him come to Woodstock.

  That summer of 1991 Sony changed its mind. The executives who had believed in us thought they’d spotted a dismal trend in the lack of success of Robbie Robertson’s second solo album, as well as those of some other over-forty rockers who shall remain nameless. They bought out our record deal, and we didn’t have anything to say about it.

  I tried not to let this stuff annoy me too much. We rebuilt the barn better than ever, this time out of good Catskill stone that isn’t gonna burn, God willin’. My daughter, Amy, is as beautiful as her mother and is beginning her own career as a singer. She’s got a great blues style and even got her picture in Rolling Stone with her old college band, Big Blue Squid. Meanwhile, Garth and I try to accommodate as many people as want to make the pilgrimage to Bearsville to record with us, and I’m in the fortunate position of turning down film roles and commercials that don’t seem quite right to me.

  But anytime Ben & Jerry’s calls, I’m there.

  We filled The Band’s piano chair with Rick Bell, another old friend from Canada. He was one of the Hawks that Albert Grossman had lured away to Janis Joplin’s great band many years before, so Rick is like family to us.

  John Simon was recording a solo album in Woodstock early in 1992 for Pioneer in Japan, and some of us in The Band were helping him out when we realized that we had to work together again. Nobody, we understood, knew us like John. An independent record company in Tennessee called Pyramid Records picked up our option, so to speak, and that’s where that part of the story stands for now. John Simon is currently producing our next album.

  Later in 1992 we got a call to appear at the big show in New York marking Bob Dylan’s thirty years of recording for CBS. We showed up at Madison Square Garden as a sextet: mandolin, two guitars, two accordions, and a trap drum. Backstage was like a reunion of our entire career, including John Hammond, Jr., Neil Young, Eric Clapton, Ron Wood, Johnny Cash and family, Tom Petty, Roger McGuinn, and many more than I can remember. We met a new generation of stars, like Shawn Colvin, Mary Chapin Carpenter, and the guys in Pearl Jam. The stage band was Booker T. and the MGs, including Duck Dunn and Steve Cropper.

  When it was our turn, Eric Clapton did us the honor of introducing us. He came onstage before we went on and said, “In 1968 an album came out called Music From Big Pink. It changed my life, and it changed the course of American music. Ladies and gentlemen, The Band.”

  We walked out amid cheering. It had been many years since we’d faced down a crowd that big. We were all extremely proud to be there, because we all knew the debt we owed Bob Dylan could never be repaid. We were a bar band when he found us. We’d grown up and practiced our craft in honky-tonks and dance halls. We learned everything—songwriting, recording, stage shows—from watching him. It meant a lot for us to pay tribute to him that magical night.

  There were six of us: Garth, Rick, Jimmy Weider, Rick Bell, Randy Ciarlante, and me. We did “When I Paint My Masterpiece” in a two-accordion arrangement. Afterward Danko and I barged in on Bob to thank him for inviting us. It had been ten years since I’d seen him. “Glad you could make it,” he said, shaking hands. “I’m gonna be seeing you again soon.” I was going to ask what he meant when they called him up onstage to do his songs.

  * * *

  And so that’s my story. I’m fifty-three years old as of this writing and still going strong. The Band works as much as it can, and when we come to your town to promote our new record, we’re expecting to see you there.

  As for the other characters in our ongoing drama, let me see if I can summarize...

  My daddy, Jasper Diamond, passed away in late 1992 at the age of eighty-two. My two sisters and brother, Mary Cavette and her sisters, Anna Lee Williams, Fireball Carter, and Mutt Cagle are all alive and well, thank God. But Harold Jenkins—Conway Twitty—passed on in 1993.

  Ronnie Hawkins still lives up in “Mortgage Manor North” outside Toronto and still plays the bars up there. His son Robin and beautiful daughter Leah are in the band, and when the Hawk gets goin’ on “Who Do You Love,” that old rockabilly spirit comes alive. Hawk may be pushing sixty, but some things never change. Not long ago Rick and Elizabeth Danko were at the airport in Oslo, Norway, waiting for a plane to New York. At the other end of the lounge they heard a familiar voice going, “Yeah, these young girls only impress me when they bring their own apparatus!” Rick turned to Elizabeth and said, “Do you know who that sounds like?” Sure enough, it was Ronnie coming through town on one of his own Scandinavian tours.

  Colonel Harold Kudlets is retired in Hamilton, Ontario. Morris Levy died in 1990 with jail time hanging over his head. The old Hit Man of Roulette Records never served a day, no matter what they said about him.

  Woodstock is Woodstock again. As a friend of mine said the other day, “Woodstock is still great. The only reason that Butterfield and them aren’t hanging out here anymore is that they’re dead.”

  Libby Titus, mother of my daughter, lives in Bob Dylan’s old house above Woodstock, and in New York, where she’s involved in the music business. Albert Grossman’s widow, Sally, still runs Albert’s Bearsville empire. Jane Manuel works for the organization.

  Rick Danko works as a solo artist when The Band is inactive. He had to endure the loss of his son, who died of a breathing ailment while at college. He has since collaborated with folk singer Eric Andersen and Norwegian singer Jonas Fjeld, and remains my brother in arms. Garth Hudson keeps busy as a sound consultant to synthesizer manufacturers, and he’s working on computer software relating to the history of R&B and jump-band music. He and his wife, Maud, recently moved back to their house near Woodstock after years in California.

  Robbie still lives in Southern California. His wife is a successful therapist specializing in drug and alcohol recovery. Robbie is in the music business, releasing albums and working on other projects, most recently one involving the late Roy Orbison’s last recordings. Every year he helps to induct great musicians into the nonexistent Rock and Roll Hall of Fame that will supposedly be built in Cleveland some day.

  It ought to be in Memphis, or—even better—Helena, Arkansas.

  Not long after Bob Dylan’s thirtieth-anniversary concert, Bill Clinton of Arkansas was elected President of the United States. And as true sons of Arkansas, The Band had the honor of providing the musical entertainment for the “Blue Jean Bash,” an unofficial inauguration barbecue for twenty-five hundred Arkansawyers and Bill Clinton’s campaign staff, held in the National Building Museum in Washington, DC, three days before Bill took office.

  We had a soundcheck in the hall—the largest indoor columned building in North America—on the night before the show. Artist Peter Max was hanging his giant posters, and the champion barbecue chefs who’d come up from Little Rock were preparing giant ice sculptures of razorback hogs. The Cate Brothers were on the bill, along with Dr. John, Clarence Clemons, Vassar Clements, Steve Stills, and other old friends. The Secret Service were all over the place, and it looked like the Blue Jean Bash was gonna have some visitors.

  Around midnight I was playing drums with Randy Ciarlante and Porky, who plays with the Cates, when a figure crouched down at my left elbow. He had on a baseball cap and a pair of dark glasses. A hooded sweatshirt lettered “New York Americans” was pulled over his hat. It seemed that he was talking to me.

  I looked again. It was Bob Dylan.

  I knew he’d come. His manager had cal
led Joe Forno a few days before to say that Bob wanted to be there with us when Arkansas took over the country.

  And now Bob was saying, “So, uh, Levon, howya doin’? What’s up?”

  I said, “Bob, anything you wanna do is fine with us, ’cause we really appreciate you coming by.”

  Communication between us was more instinctive than anything else.

  I said, “We’re just playing some blues, but, you know, if you call a tune we’ll be there.”

  He thought for moment, and said, “How’s about ‘To Be Alone With You’?”

  Bob showed up the next night and came on after the Hawk had finished “Who Do You Love.” The crowd screamed in delight when Bob walked out at the end of the show in his cowboy hat and went into “To Be Alone With You.” U.S. senators were dancing next to the stage! The finale was “I Shall Be Released,” and it seemed like everyone knew the words. Being the mischievous type, Bob Dylan didn’t sing along.

  Yeah! That’s all she wrote. I’ve come a long way from Turkey Scratch, but in my heart I’m still Lavon, the hambone kid in the 4-H show. In fact, the main thing that still gets my juices flowing is to get over to the venue on the night of the job, wherever it might be, anywhere in the world. The man that’s running the joint knows we’re coming, and he invites me in and helps me set up my stuff. We play some music, and then he pays us. That’s the only way I ever wanted it.

  As for The Band, we never sold millions of records or got attacked by groupies, but we’re still here. We never thought our “career” was more important than the music. That’s our whole story right there.

  “They were grown men,” wrote The Philadelphia Inquirer, “who had climbed the mountain together, spoken to the gods, and returned to the valley, where they once again became mortal.”

  Hell, all I know is that I haven’t had to cultivate cotton since I was seventeen.

  Afterword

  THE MOST FUN I’VE HAD SO FAR

  Levon Helm and I began talking about working on a book together in Woodstock in early 1991. The original idea was for Levon to tell some of the old road stories, legends that had accrued to a long career that began in the cotton fields and 4-H Club shows in Phillips County, Arkansas; ignited when he joined Ronnie Hawkins’s hell-bent rockabilly band in 1958; witnessed from the drummer’s chair Bob Dylan’s electric adventures in 1965; and climaxed in the decade-long popular triumph of The Band. Levon wanted to call this book Best Seat in the House.

  Just before we started to work later that year, Levon’s famous flagbedecked barn went up in smoke, almost burning to the ground. (Untouched by the flames was a vault containing most of Levon’s archives and records.) We began working in a rented house in nearby Bearsville while Levon started to rebuild a new house and studio on the site of the old. The shock of the fire, which could easily have taken the lives of the people sleeping in the house that night, was crucial to the slow outpouring of emotive recollection that drives the best sections of Levon’s narrative. The death in Woodstock of Stan Szelest, as he was about to join a new lineup of The Band in 1991, served as another apposite reminder of mortality and the passage of time. As we got deeper into the book during 1992, reconstruction started on Levon’s barn and The Band began working again. Levon, Rick Danko, and Garth Hudson were joined by Richard Bell, Jimmy Weider, and Randy Ciarlante as the group began to develop new songs. Governor Bill Clinton was running for president and there was a big Arkansas vibe in the air—full of hope. In October 1992 Levon headlined the fabled Helena Blues Festival, with the audience seated on the great levee that kept the old river port from being flooded by the Mississippi. We had a chance to revisit the dusty Delta farm towns—Marvell, Elaine, Clarksdale—where Robert Johnson played his demonic blues songs in the streets, where Levon grew up driving his daddy’s tractor in the cotton fields and hanging around Sonny Boy Williamson and the King Biscuit Boys.

  As we kept taping Levon’s story, interviewing old friends who shared his experiences, the road legends and adventures faded into the early chapters and the memories turned darker. The shadow side of The Band’s saga had to come out, and the recall and re-creation of addiction, rip-offs, and the death of Richard Manuel was a difficult process. As our research into the group’s history progressed, we realized that for years The Band’s story had been “owned” by Robbie Robertson. He had been the group’s public spokesman from the 1968 debut of Music from Big Pink to The Last Waltz in 1978, and then on through the publicity around his early solo career in the 1980s. For Levon, this book developed into an opportunity to reclaim the group’s history from a different perspective—the drummer’s chair, the best seat in the house. It was a last chance to tell a different version, closer to the truth, about some crucial issues that had been buried or ignored in the semi-official propaganda that had entered the canon as the accepted story of The Band.

  Levon moved back into his house in the late spring of 1993, and we finished taping before blazing logs in a rebuilt Catskill bluestone fireplace. Levon then began to write down crucial episodes and texts we had overlooked while taping the oral history. The best, most evocative tales in this book—Tornado Alley, the F. S. Walcott Rabbits Foot Minstrels, Elvis at Marianna High School—were written by him alone. We spent a lot of time working on the manuscript, and there was some final uncertainty about publishing it because we weren’t sure what we had. Bob Dylan helped us a lot when we sent him a set of proofs and he came back with a quote that gave us the confidence we needed: “Torrid and timeless, explodes in the pure Dixie dialect of rockabilly, the back beat of America, the entire landscape—wisdom and humor roaring off of every page, expertly written with Heart and Soul by one of the true heroes of my generation. You’ve got to read this!”

  With that, we went to press. Rick Danko, kind as ever, allowed us to use the title of the classic song he wrote with Mr. Dylan. This Wheel’s on Fire was published in New York, London, and Tokyo in October 1993. The New York Times told its readers, “Levon Helm has a real story to tell.” Entertainment Weekly called our book “one of the most insightful and intelligent rock biographies ever published.”

  * * *

  The Band made three more albums between 1993 and 1998 for small independent labels. Modest records of American roots music without obvious masterpieces or hit singles, all nonetheless chimed with the ring of truth for which The Band was famous. “Not bad records for small budgets,” Levon calls them. “We were able to put together ten or twelve songs at a time. Not bad little records. What the hell do you want for fifty grand?” he laughs.

  Jericho, released in 1993, was their first album in fifteen years. Produced by old friend John Simon, it mixed tunes the group was doing in shows (Dylan’s “Blind Willie McTell,” Bruce Springsteen’s “Atlantic City”) with gruff American roots music like “Blues Stay Away from Me” and Muddy Waters’s late masterpiece “Stuff You Gotta Watch.” A 1985 private tape of Richard Manuel yielded “Country Boy”—The Band’s stubborn refusal to exclude Richard from participation just because he wasn’t around Woodstock when they were recording in Levon’s new barn studio.

  The following year The Band toured Japan and was elected to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. Eric Clapton delivered a passionately mesmerizing induction speech. “It was tough,” Eric said, “to be a serious musician who couldn’t be in The Band.” Garth Hudson then broke Clapton’s spell with gently ironic remarks, thanking more than fifty people for The Band’s success. Levon missed the ceremony altogether, electing to stay home in Woodstock. Later he played several benefit shows at the Hall when it finally opened in Cleveland.

  In 1995 Capitol released The Band Live at Watkins Glen, recorded at the immense 1973 show with the Dead and the Allmans, which some believe was the largest outdoor rock festival ever held. The disc provided definitive readings of The Band’s great versions of “Loving You Is Sweeter than Ever” and “Don’t Ya Tell Henry” and included a bravura Garth Hudson organ impromptu during the summer cloudburst that soaked the huge crowd
and stopped the show until Garth, fuelled by a glass of Canadian whiskey, began to play the rain away.

  In 1996 The Band produced High on the Hog with Aaron Hurwitz, a musician and engineer who became a frequent collaborator. Hog collected Dylan’s “Forever Young” and “I Must Love Her Too Much” and J. J. Cale’s laconic “Crazy Mama,” which Rick Danko liked to do in concert. Garth Hudson brought in bluesman Champion Jack Dupree for a rubbery jam with The Band called “Ramble Jungle” that aimed an affectionately satiric jab at World Music. (Born in 1910, Mr. Dupree was eighty-seven when he cut this track with The Band.) Other highlights were “The High Price of Love,” written by the band with Stan Szelest, and another recovered Richard Manuel performance, “She Knows,” from his final tour in 1986.

  Rick Danko continued to play shows with singer Eric Andersen and Jonas Fjeld during these years. While they were in Japan in 1996, Rick was arrested for drug possession and faced a long jail term. After several months in a harsh Japanese prison, a Tokyo judge finally suspended Rick’s sentence and let him return to Woodstock.

  The following year, Keith Richards and The Band recorded “Deuce and a Quarter,” a way-cool rockabilly track on guitarist Scotty Moore and D. J. Fontana’s album All The King’s Men. Scotty and D.J., guitarist and drummer in Elvis Presley’s original band, supervised the track at Levon’s studio.