The Band remains one of music’s most important, influencing many (Clapton was a big admirer in the late 60s), they can lay good claim to be the tap root of all of Americana and with the passing of Garth Hudson at 87, they are all gone.
I was 19 and 20 before I really ‘got’ the band. My love of loud guitars and riffs couldn’t appreciate their subtleties. But I bought The Last Waltz, to be honest for everyone else but the Band but fell in love with their idiosyncratic sound. And what a back catalogue awaited me. I think I love every single album and the first two are especially groundbreaking.
Unlike most other keyboard players at the time Garth didn’t play a Hammond organ, preferring a Lowrey organ. You know that ‘twangy’ sound on Up On Cripple Creek? That is Garth playing a clavinet through a wah-wah. I never knew that.
He gave the music texture and quirk and played all sorts of instruments including saxophone, brass, woodwind and later synthesiser. They were a band without stars or they were all stars. Amazing to think Garth was born before the war in 1937, which meant he was 23 when I was born and over 30 by the time The Band started releasing records.
I’d credit him and The Band for expanding my musical palette, they sung about worlds I didn’t know of and seemed worldly wise and sophisticated. Stars but not stars. Organic, somehow. But in the UK, they only had three charting albums, with Stage Fright making #15 and two hits The Weight (#21 UK #63 USA) and Rag Mama Rag(#16 UK #57 USA) and though every one charted in America, as did 12 singles with the highest position being attained by Up On Cripple Creek (#25 USA) only the second and third made the top ten in the UK and the second was the only million seller stateside. I don’t think of The Band as niche but I suppose in terms of sales, they are. Their only #1 was accompanying Bob Dylan on the brilliant Planet Waves, a true work of art.
87 is a grand old age for a timeless musician who, in a way, felt as though he was a Canadian that belonged to an older, wiser soulful America. How times change.
