Five musicians sitting on a worn leather set. They know more about each other than they care to. They've experienced things together that ordinary people wouldn't even dream of, and they've enjoyed the highest feelings of happiness and looked into the deepest abysses. They have played in front of hundreds of thousands of cheering fans, by others they have been mercilessly booed. They have spent the nights in gloomy juke-joints in front of a handful of boozers and have stolen their food together in shopping malls.
The five men have their own code. A glance, a short raising of the voice, a wink or a small gesture with the hand are enough to communicate wordlessly. They're not just some band, they're a bond, a family, a unit. Maybe that explains why no rock group ever sounded like this one. The Band were a powerful orchestra, so much larger than the sum of its only five instruments.
This street life started when they were teenagers (only Garth Hudson was already over 20 when he joined the band). The Canadian Rockabilly singer Ronnie Hawkins had seduced her to this life in the late 50s. According to Robbie Robertson with the words: "You won't earn much, but you'll have more girls than Frank Sinatra!" Of course he was right. But now they were grown men in their thirties. Robertson: "The band has been on the road together for 16 years. Eight years in bars, dives and dance halls, eight years in stadiums and arenas. The road was our school, it taught us how to survive. She taught us everything we know. The road has taken many of the big ones. Hank Williams. Buddy Holly. Otis Redding. Janis. Jimi Hendrix. Elvis. It's a goddamn impossible life." I couldn't do it anymore. So they broke up.
American music
Your work was done. In the summer of 1967, when everyone else was intoxicated by the psychedelic escapades of "Sgt. Pepper", together with their mentor Bob Dylan, they had initiated a return to the roots of young rock music. The sessions at the legendary Big Pink House in Woodstock were the birth of a genre we now call Americana. Especially with their first two own albums, "Music From Big Pink" (1968) and "The Band" (1969), The Band had ensured a lasting grounding of American music and short-circuited the US scene with the traditions of jazz, blues and country. Above that The Band had become stars with song classics like "The Weight", "Up On Cripple Creek", "The Shape I'm In" and "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down". In the 70s more albums followed, some great, some not so great. And then there was Dylan: After they had passed their baptism of fire in big business with him in 1965 and then went on retreat in the basement of Big Pink, they got together again in 1973. First they worked together on Dylan's album "Planet Waves", followed by the "Before The Flood" world tour.
