by Todd Tolls
Compact Classic Rock is a series of short articles on what I consider to be the most important albums released during the classic rock era of 1964-1982. These pieces are meant for people who are looking to build a library and who might be unfamiliar with popular music from this time period; to that end I’ll try to provide the wider historical context surrounding the albums, the influences as well as the effect they had on the music that came after them. And as the name implies, I’ll try to keep it brief.
At the end of September 1969, the height of US troop deployment in Vietnam, and barely one month after the psychedelic love fest that was Woodstock, The Band released their eponymous second album. A somewhat ramshackle and purposely low fidelity affair recorded in the pool house of a Los Angeles mansion once belonging to Sammy Davis Jr., The Band was a retreat into the past, away from the excesses and drug culture of the late 1960s. It remains their crowning achievement; an album of evocative and timeless Americana, brazenly out of step with the times.
In fact, there’s little else within the canon of the classic rock era that sounds as uniquely American as The Band. Building on the experimentally traditional Music from Big Pink, the album plays as homage to a by-gone era; even the cover photograph looks eerily old-fashioned, with the group appearing like a dishevelled gang of gold rush panhandlers and not at all like rock stars. Written largely (and improbably) by Canadian Robbie Robertson, the songs on The Band never come across as affected or contrived; Robertson crafts his tales of nineteenth century pastoral life so convincingly and with such sympathy that it almost seems as if he is somehow reliving his own past. Robertson was similarly obsessive in the studio, blending a hodgepodge of folk, blues, and Dixieland jazz together with a modern rock quintet to realize his singular vision.
The Band is a difficult album to categorize; nominally, it’s country music, but not in the sense of the rhinestone cowboys that Nashville was churning out at the time. It’s music of the country, and there’s never been anything like it before or since.
Listen To: “Up on Cripple Creek”, “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down” and “King Harvest (Has Surely Come)”
Deeper Cuts: “Whispering Pines” and “Jawbone”
Where to Go Next: First album “Music from Big Pink”
Watch This: Martin Scorsese’s concert documentary “The Last Waltz”
Recommended Reading: “Across the Great Divide: The Band and America” by Barney Hoskyns