@bkeske: The night before! Upon hearing the news, I for the first, last, and only time cried at the passing of a musician or singer. I'm tearing up now; I loved Richard SO much. So did Clapton.
Springsteen and Clapton on their favorite, heh, band.
I went and saw Once Were Brothers; Robbie Robertson And The Band in a theater early last year, and now tonight on a DVD at home. It is alternately both thrilling and irritating, but that’s not the point of this thread. If you don’t already know how very, very special The Band were, and the deep impact they made on Rock ’n’ Roll, here is what Bruce and Eric had to say about them in the film:
- Springsteen: "I think I was in a little coffee shop in Redbank, New Jersey. I kid came in with Music From Big Pink, put it on the sound system. And suddenly this music comes on, and everything changes."
- Clapton: "When I heard Big Pink, it was like someone had nailed me through my chest onto the wall. I was immediately converted. I thought ’This is what I want to do’. It changed my life."
Mine too.
- Springsteen: "I think I was in a little coffee shop in Redbank, New Jersey. I kid came in with Music From Big Pink, put it on the sound system. And suddenly this music comes on, and everything changes."
- Clapton: "When I heard Big Pink, it was like someone had nailed me through my chest onto the wall. I was immediately converted. I thought ’This is what I want to do’. It changed my life."
Mine too.
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Elvis Costello on The Band I was wondering really where you got your odd singing style from? It's very nasal and it has a lot of American inflections. https://www.elviscostello.info/articles/d-g/fa8308a.html Irony 1: All the members of The Band other than Levon were Canadian Irony 2: The Band had 3 fabulous lead singers. Levon was a force of nature, and probably the one most would pick. Levon's favorite singer (and drummer - "he played rhythm on the piano and melody on the drums") was Richard Manuel. Irony 3: Many seem to have bought the "Brown Album is all Robbie" story - he is credited with writing or co-writing every song and even scored a engineer credit). What about Garth? He played 9 instruments on the album, and it's well known that "Honey Boy" was the most involved Band member on the recording/production side. Irony 4: Robbie was a great talent, and did write some fine songs even after leaving The Band. He never did reach that level again, though. The one thing he did learn (and thoroughly exploit) was that the $$$ were in the songwriting credit. Maybe he wrote all the words. Maybe he even composed all the music. There's no way that he wrote all the arrangements, though (Garth - play these measures in your written score on slide trumpet, OK?). He knew what he was doing to his bandmates. Irony 5: He left because he wanted to be more than 1/5 of The Band. Instead, he walked out on far and away the most important part of his legacy. |
I agree about Testimony @tomic601.
I got to hear Amy live on stage with Levon, at The House Of Blues on Sunset Blvd. Levon’s throat was still healing from his cancer treatment, so he didn’t do any singing. That he left to Amy and a short little black harp player, whose name I don’t recall. Levon was playing drums better than ever, and he had a hot band. They were playing pretty much pure Chicago-style Blues. Little Feat drummer Richie Hayward got up on stage and took over on drums for a coupla songs, a cool bonus.
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