Guitarist and songwriter Robbie Robertson died last week at age 80. He was a member, some say the leader, of The Band, a musical group from the late 1960s and early 1970s. The Band was a darling of music critics, even making the cover of Time, the somewhat straight news magazine of the day.
The group had several radio hits during their time together and were very influential. Robbie Robertson and The Band also greatly influenced me during my waning years of high school, when I was on the cusp of adulthood. I knew by then that I wanted to at least try to be a real musician.
I think part of The Band’s appeal was how they seemed to go about making music. They played the right notes and they weren’t sloppy, but the music had an almost rickety, easy-going feel that made me think of a bunch of guys just playing whatever came to them at the moment. They often swapped each other’s instruments which likely contributed to this careless yet appropriate feel. Somehow every song just came together.
The group got their break in 1965 when Bob Dylan asked them to be his backup band for his groundbreaking electrified music debut. In 1968 I became acquainted with Robertson and The Band after I bought their first album, Music From Big Pink. From the circus-like cover painting by Dylan to the inner photos of the band standing with family members I knew this was something different. The family photo was captioned “Next of Kin,” and I felt like I was looking at my own kin from the Kentucky side of my family. The songs were like nothing I had been experiencing up to that time — one hundred degrees from slick AM radio.
One Robertson song on the album that received particular attention was “The Weight.” Its hook, “Take a load off, Fanny, and put it right on me” has become one of those timeless sing-along phrases that everybody seems to know. And as skeptical as I am about Greatest this-or-that lists, I wouldn’t argue with Rolling Stone which ranked “The Weight” 42nd on its list of ‘500 Greatest Songs of All Time.”
In 1969, the group released their second album, The Band. The critic Jeffery Blehar, among others, considers it a masterpiece. It is “a miraculously perfect summary of America’s own mythological understanding of itself.” It is helpful to know that Robertson is Canadian which perhaps gives the listener an outsider’s take on our country and on America’s history. For me, the most powerful song on the album is “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down.” It tells the story of Confederate soldier Virgil Caine who is witnessing the end of the war. “In the winter of ’65/we were hungry, just barely alive.” He is back with his wife in Tennessee and, at one point, Robert E. Lee comes riding by. The last verse explains that, like his father and his brother, he took a rebel stand. His brother “was just 18, proud and brave/but a Yankee laid him in his grave.”
From the first time I heard it, this song affected me in a powerful way. Yes, it is good and right that the South was defeated; that the institution of slavery was ended. And, yes, the people who fought to continue that way of life were mistaken in their belief of how the world should be. But then I think of people who believe so strongly in something they make a choice to willingly sacrifice and die for that belief. This song helps me see the “Other” as human beings with families and cares and lives no matter what their beliefs and actions. And so, even today, I struggle to understand people who I believe are clearly wrong. How much grace should I give them?
In 1977, As The Band and Robertson were parting ways, Martin Scorsese made a documentary about the group’s final performances together called “The Last Waltz.” Robertson began writing film scores for many of Scorsese’s movies. The rest of The Band continued on for a time, until they didn’t.
I believe music and art can teach us if we are willing to listen and observe. Over these many decades, as I experience artists like Robbie Robertson and The Band, I hope and trust I have learned something.
Norman Knight, a retired Clark-Pleasant Middle School teacher, writes this weekly column for the Daily Journal. Send comments to [email protected].
