New York proved expensive for an out-of-work band subsisting on a modest retainer. We still wanted to record, so we started looking for a place to rehearse some music.” “We were road musicians without a road to go on.
“We didn’t know what to do,” Rick Danko said in Levon Helm’s memoir, This Wheel’s on Fire. To the remaining members, this began to look more and more like a good career move. Drummer Levon Helm had departed the group (albeit temporarily) the previous year, earning a living on an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico.
Pink houses album cover professional#
All upcoming concert dates were cancelled as rock’s poet laureate recovered from his injuries at his nearby home, casting his backing band into a state of professional limbo. The story of Big Pink really began the moment Bob Dylan lost control of his Triumph Tiger 100 motorcycle while riding through the outskirts of Woodstock, New York on July 29th, 1966. Big Pink wasn’t exactly a rock-star-worthy country estate. To celebrate the 50th anniversary of the landmark album – and the upcoming release of an expanded box set featuring outtakes and other rarities – here are 10 facts you might not have known about the Band’s debut.ġ. “Our local paper in Woodstock, by the way, said the album was OK but we could have done better.” “There are people who will work their lives away in vain and not touch it.” But according to Levon Helm, Music From Big Pink wasn’t quite met with universal acclaim. “This album was recorded in approximately two weeks,” Al Kooper wrote in his five-star Rolling Stone review. The idea of moving out to the country has become a rock & roll cliché, but the Band did it first – and they did it best. “The songs were more like buried treasure from American lore than new songs by contemporary artists.” Those who tuned in simply to hear the Dylan-penned “I Shall Be Released” – as well as “Tears of Rage” and “This Wheel’s on Fire,” both of which he co-authored – were stunned by the depth of original compositions like Robinson’s “The Weight,” which emerged as the album’s standout track. They were seasoned veterans whose debut album sounded more like a band in their prime,” producer John Simon observed in 1993. The quintet managed the seemingly impossible task of escaping their reputation as Bob Dylan’s backing band purely on the strength of their writing and playing.
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