The group Bob Dylan always wanted to offer a helping hand to: “He got us to Woodstock”
While Bob Dylan might be known for keeping himself to himself a lot of the time, when he truly loves and admires what a band or artist has to offer, he’ll go out of his way to the extreme in order to become their own personal guiding light and a beacon of wisdom.
Whatever you want to call it, if Dylan liked what you were up to artistically, he’d make sure you were well aware of how much of a cheerleader he was.
Among those whom he chose to help along the way were The Band, a group with whom he famously found an affinity when they first arrived on the scene as Levon and the Hawks. He’d recruit this early incarnation of the group to become his backing band in 1965, coinciding with his own famous transition at the Newport Folk Festival, where he ‘went electric’ and confounded the folk traditionalists who thought it was sacrilege to do anything that wasn’t strictly acoustic.
Of course, after their stint working with Dylan, they would morph into the best-known incarnation of the band, but having worked with such a formidable songwriter and performer wasn’t enough on its own to propel them into the spotlight automatically. The Band had to work hard on their craft and lean upon the support of Dylan in order to work their way up the pecking order under this new moniker, but with the assistance of their old pal and their self-evident talents, it didn’t take long for them to begin getting booked for major concerts.
Speaking about how The Band changed their approach in the early years, drummer and songwriter Levon Helm said that they made a point of making the live shows stand out by employing an unusual feature, which worked in their favour. “We wanted to go against the grain as far as the flavour of music at that time,” Helm stated. “We turned it back and went more blues, and more roots music-oriented, so when we played for Bill Graham at Fillmore East, one of our requests was to turn the light show way down, if not completely off.”
Standing out was one thing, but they still needed Dylan’s assistance to get them onto the biggest stages, which he duly provided. “Bob Dylan got us to Woodstock,” Helm continued, before going on to talk about how following his relentless touring schedule was perhaps one of the key factors in them getting noticed.
“We played with Bob for some shows through the United States and Canada. We followed Bob up through the country, and started getting together in the afternoons and trying to come up with tunes.”
According to Helm, Dylan wasn’t just helping the group get big by insisting to promoters that they performed on grand stages such as Woodstock, where they undoubtedly flourished. When it came to the songwriting process, Dylan was often heavily involved and would provide plenty of guidance to members, particularly Richard Manuel.
“Bob and Richard used to have a typewriter that sat on the coffee table in the living room,” Helm noted. “The two of them would go by and type little notes to each other. One would read what the other one wrote, put a couple of lines in underneath that, and a lot of times, by the end of the day, we’d have a couple or three pages out of there.”
Dylan would remain a significant part of The Band’s existence right up until the end of their time together, appearing as part of The Last Waltz in 1976 and helping them bid farewell to the rock and roll world, just as he’d helped bring them to the foreground in the first place.
Never Miss A Tale
The Far Out Bob Dylan Newsletter
All the latest stories about Bob Dylan from the independent voice of culture.
Straight to your inbox.