“We’re big fans”: The artist who inspired the sound of The Band
Despite having one of the least inspiring names in the history of rock music, The Band were a lot more influential and important than their understatement of a moniker would like to suggest. Having been the backing group for Bob Dylan in the 1960s and paving the way for many acts that fused together Americana, folk, country and rock in the future, such as Eric Clapton, the Grateful Dead and Neil Young, there’s plenty that wouldn’t be the same without the influence of The Band.
Consisting of five multi-talented musicians throughout the majority of their original run as a group in the late 1960s and ‘70s, there was a real vigour that ran through each member and their musical styles. With the raspy vocals of drummer Levon Helm contrasting with the soulfulness of organist Richard Manuel’s tones and bassist Rick Danko’s versatile ability to switch between the two, their power as a vocal group was also incredible to behold.
All good acts have to have outside influence coming from somewhere, and for The Band, their love of a wide range of different acts was always going to seep into their own music. While their hectic schedule of touring and recording often meant that the group didn’t have a massive amount of time to discover new music, they were constantly open to hearing different ideas that could potentially push their sound in alternate directions.
Speaking to Melody Maker in 1971, guitarist and principal songwriter Robbie Robertson was asked about what was especially grabbing the group in terms of influences at the time, and while he initially commented on how their exposure to music mostly “comes up here and there – little things you hear,” he was quick to point towards soul singer Lee Dorsey as being an artist the group could universally agree on. “We’re big fans of Lee Dorsey,” Robertson exclaimed, before pondering “does that affect us, no doubt about it.”
There’s a definite link that can be drawn between Dorsey’s style and what the Band produced, especially on their 1970 album Stage Fright, where there were certainly more soul and R&B influences creeping through. The influence of producer Todd Rundgren would also have helped them in developing this sound, as the majority of songs he engineered fuse together a potent mix of soul, blues and country rock, with songs like ‘The Shape I’m In’ giving Manuel an opportunity to really exercise his soulful vocal chops.
After explaining how the group’s intense workload prohibited them from indulging in deeper listening to artists, Robertson further elaborated on how the band would pick up on smaller influences from brief exposure to different radio stations. “You just hear what everybody else hears,” Robertson claimed, “What comes up on radio. There’s so many kinds of radio in the United States – so many places where you can hear music – that you just don’t have to go as far. So you just take what you like.”
As for whether they enjoyed only listening to smaller morsels of music compared to in their early career when they were actively searching for new music to enthuse about, Robertson would claim that hearing things on the radio allowed them to experience music in a different way, and was particularly warm towards the music that they had heard coming out of the magazine’s native United Kingdom.
“There were all these terrific musicians,” he exclaimed. “They just loved it so much that they put their heart into it and it was bound to work.”
The Band’s passion for listening to all sorts of music was easy to grasp from their own output, and the way in which Robertson expressed his own personal admiration for Dorsey and the music that they digested as a group is telling of how important the rich variety of sounds surrounding them was to their work.
