Revisiting a classic: The Band take dominion of their own tale with The Band
The Band always did seem like a fictional outfit, their legacy is not some retrospective tale extolled by romantics. They really were folk wayfarers wandering around the States with bedraggled clothes and dogeared instruments. Itinerant musicians assimilating culture and hard knocks on the wing, as they delved into the musical swirl of America before their paths collided and the beatnik brethren were fated to slide into the shadow of a numen, only to have their day in the sun once Bob Dylan went his way, and they went theirs.
Music from the Big Pink was a statement of arrival; their self-titled follow-up saw them lean into their own story. Sam Shepard once said of Bob Dylan, “Dylan has invented himself. He’s made himself up from scratch. That is, from the things he had around him and inside him. Dylan is an invention of his own mind. The point isn’t to figure him out but to take him in. He gets into you anyway, so why not just take him in? He’s not the first one to have invented himself, but he’s the first one to have invented Dylan.”
The Band, however, are a product no self-invention, and yet, they weave the same mythic tale of America akin to some atmospheric folklore. Every characteristic they acquired was borne from their serpentine journey which culminated in making their own albums. It was a journey that began long before their self-titled sophomore effort in 1969—and even that title tells a story. It is a story that says, ‘We are finally ready to be The Band’.
The hit single from the record is, undoubtedly, ‘The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down’. The song sees them delve into the past, and that is as fitting as it gets for the wandering outfit. It is as though they have embraced the lore of their band. It’s like their beards got bushier, their clothes became even more empirical with tried and tested fabrics fit to face the hardy winters of wherever, and the sounds they wove seemed drenched in even more history.
Country, folk, jazz, the blues, rock or hillbilly, it mattered not, if it was fit for the song then it was going in there. As such, The Band’s self-titled epic is a smorgasbord of American culture. It is a musical museum of sorts, extolled by some of the finest exponents of atmosphere around. The barn is erected around you no matter where you may be, and stars are scattered above. However, the beauty is that this is no pastiche of a false idea, it is the Real McCoy.
Crammed with toe-tapping delights, the album may well have its peaks and troughs, but because of the story it tells, those chapters are all part of the same joyous book. This record is the sound of a band embracing who they are and relishing in an individualism that they did nothing to manufacture. It is an all-American epic to be enjoyed by anyone. A classic cultural encapsulation brimming with beautiful romanticism.
