@slaw, the quote you cite was from master guitarist Ry Cooder, on his way home with Jack Nitzsche (Phil Spector’s arranger and orchestrator, later in Crazy Horse for a couple of albums, including Neil Young’s Harvest, which Jack produced) and record producer/A & R man Denny Bruce (Fab T-Birds, Leo Kottke) from seeing & hearing The Band at The Pasadena Civic Auditorium in 1970. Ry said "I like them because they look and sound like men, not boys."
The quote is in the recent book The Story Of The Band; From Big Pink to The Last Waltz by Harvey Kubernik. I’m about a third of the way through it, and boy is it good. Another quote from the numerous music professionals asked for their thoughts on The Band:
Australian writer/critic David N. Pepperell on seeing Dylan and The Hawks (soon to change their name) in 1966: "To this day I will still say that Dylan and The Hawks was the greatest music concert I have ever attended. The Hawks made all the previous groups we had seen---including The Beatles, The Kinks, The Rolling Stones---sound like amateur outfits, almost kids’ bands. This was an aggregation of adults, people who understood dynamics as much as volume (me: SO few Rock bands understand this), tapestry of sound rather than just harmonics, and the way that playing less can be playing more."
That last concept (less is more) is well understood amongst jazz musicians. There is a quote, attributed variously to Miles Davis, Duke Ellington, Count Basie, and others (it doesn’t matter WHO said it, it’s the wisdom of WHAT was said), that goes "The notes you DON’T play are as important as those you DO." Again, most Rock musicians absolutely do not understand the concept, or appreciate it’s wisdom. An awful lot of guitarists and drummers approach their instrument as if the more notes they play, the better a player are they. Listen to Ry Cooder’s guitar solo in John Hiatt’s "Lipstick Sunset." Now THERE’S a guitarist who gets it!
Dylan single-handedly transformed Rock ’n’ Roll from teenage music to adult. And The Band transformed what a Rock ’n’ Roll band could and should be. Eric Clapton on hearing Music From Big Pink (played to him by George Harrison): "Music had been headed in the wrong direction for a long time. When I heard Music From Big Pink, I thought ’Well, someone has finally got it right’." Clapton broke up Cream, and went to West Saugerties, New York to hang with The Band at the Big Pink house (in the basement of which in 1967 were recorded The Basement Tapes), waiting for them to ask him to join. Until, he says, he finally realized they neither required nor desired his services. ;-)
