[Update 4/19/2012 – On his website, the family of Levon Helm has announced, “Levon Helm passed peacefully this afternoon. He was surrounded by family, friends and band mates and will be remembered by all he touched as a brilliant musician and a beautiful soul.” The material below was posted earlier in the week, prior to Helm’s passing.]
It’s Levon Helm’s last waltz. His wife and daughter, Sandy and Amy, have indicated that he’s on the final stages of his fight with cancer. Cancer is such an inelegant and lingering disease. So, I’ll choose to remember that Levon is still living at the time I write this and reflect on his impact on American music.
I was aware of The Band largely through the airwaves and the great collective unconscious. They were just slightly before my time and my older cousins were listening to other music at that time. But everyone knew The Band and their unique roots sound and harmonic vocal stylings, even if that meant not knowing the names of particular songs. Their rock roots essence was instilled in me through sonic osmosis early on, and I recollect singing the chorus to The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down on a school bus somewhere. For a bus full of 8-11 year-old kids, that’s some impact. We sang other songs, too, but that’s not exactly the subject matter you’d expect to hear young kids singing about. The Band will always be counted on like Dylan, The Dead, Airplane and many others as something of the core of American rock and roll.
One sound in particular sealed The Band’s connection to me, and that was the huge organ and snare on the intro of Chest Fever. Just underneath this powerful rolling pipe organ sound, there was Levon, playing back on the beat, economically and beautifully. And then he’d spring to life on a chorus like he did on Dixie, driving a song with more than his voice. As he played drums, he expanding and contracted the chorus by controlling the dynamics with snare roll here and crash and fill there. And then there was his voice. Levon made you feel what he was doing, whether he was singing or playing drums. I’m sure he’ll be remembered more for his great vocal qualities, but I’ll think of his multi-instrumental talents first. He was my kind of musician too, playing nearly any string instrument in front of him from guitar to bass to mandolin.
As people remember Levon in his final days, much will be written about him. We’ll see The Last Waltz played on some cable station in the next month with an intro by Scorsese. Rock writers will call him a quintessential American icon of rock and roll, spilling platitudes of praise like they do for dead rock royalty. Whatever. Too often we count people dead even before their final breath. Just listen to the music, that’s what he’d want us all to do in his final days. Dance on, Levon, dance on.
Click on the title to view The Night They Drove Ol’ Dixie Down from the 1978 film, The Last Waltz.
