![]() Then they tailored that vocal approach to songs each of them wrote, songs that aligned with and stretched the collective's already expansive sound. They learned to sing together in that wonderfully irreverent, ad-hoc way. Wrestling with the sprawling, mythic Dylan songs had to help these musicians forge that rustic identity that became the Band's calling card. The Band might have been initially hired as accompanists for Dylan, but they quickly became accomplices – and in the process of helping Dylan develop that material, the five multi-instrumentalists discovered (and then elaborately refined) the signature characteristics of their own enterprise. But drop in anywhere on Dylan's The Basement Tapes Complete set that came out in 2014, and you encounter the aura of that basement space, and the fertile, almost viral creative energy that happened there. They wound up capturing the record in studios in New York and Los Angeles – total recording time: less than two weeks. ![]() Robbie in the center, Richard at the piano, rehearsing at Richard and Garth's house on Spencer Road. According to legend, when producer John Simon asked about the sound The Band was chasing, Robbie Robertson replied they wanted the music to sound "Just like it did in the basement." – in the basement where, after accompanying Bob Dylan on his first electric tour in 1966, The Band and the bard spent months working on songs and exploring sounds. (The vaguely defined territory tagged "Americana" being one among many.) It taught essential lessons about the importance of a sturdy frame for a song, and about how to let a song breathe so the words, however cryptic, might sink in.Ĭentral to the album's ethos is the unpressured approach to collaboration that prevailed inside the Big Pink house in West Saugerties, N.Y. It's an attic curio, sure, but one that activated ten distinct strains of nostalgia while, at the same instant, opening up superhighway-sized avenues for future exploration. It responds to the accelerating gallop of progress circa 1968 with murder ballads and allegorical teachings from the hymnals, accompanied by pump organ and the wheezy brass of a community band. Music From Big Pink has been with us for 50 years now, and though its DNA has been endlessly number-crunched and analyzed, it somehow retains its outsider aura, its capacity to surprise, its unusual gift for bending and twisting chronological time.īig Pink was unexpected on arrival and remains that way still.
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