Bob Dylan's contributions to the Band are probably greater than any other artist not actually in the group; according to both Levon Helm and Richard Manuel, after all, Dylan is the one who gave them their moniker. More important than that, their time with Dylan helped them cultivate their sound. Two sides of this sound are in two of their most famous tracks, both on Music from Big Pink. Those tracks are "I Shall Be Released", which is a cover from one of Dylan's albums, and "This Wheel's on Fire" (that's the name of this blog! Coooooooooool), which is an original track co-written by Bob Dylan and Band bassist Rick Danko.
They say everything can be replaced
They say every distance is not near
So I remember every face
Of every man who put me here
(Chorus:)
I see my light come shinin'
From the west unto the east
Any day now, any day now
I shall be released
They say ev'ry man needs protection
They say that ev'ry man must fall
Yet I swear I see my reflection
Somewhere so high above this wall
(Chorus)
Now yonder standing there in this lonely crowd
A man who swears he's not to blame
All day long I hear him shouting so loud
Just crying out that he was framed
If your memory serves you well
We're going to meet again and wait
So I'm going to unpack all my things
And sit before it gets too late
No man alive will come to you
With another tale to tell
And you know that we shall meet again
If your memory serves you well
CHORUS:
This wheel's on fire, rolling down the road
Best notify my next of kin
This wheel shall explode!
If your memory serves you well, I was going to confiscate your lace
And wrap it up in a sailor's knot and hide it in your case
If I knew for sure that it was yours, and it was oh so hard to tell
And you know that we shall meet again if your memory serves you well
(CHORUS)
If your memory serves you well, you'll remember that you're the one
Who called on them to call on me to get you your favours done
And after every plan had failed and there was nothing more to tell
And you know that we shall meet again if your memory serves you well
(CHORUS)
From Peter Viney's reflections:
During the 1965 / 1966 Dylan tours there was a double shock for the folkies. While they were still getting used to the electric sound of The Hawks, they were hit with someone actually joining Dylan on backing vocal in One Too Many Mornings when Rick Danko sang "… Behind!" When Dylan and The Hawks retired to the basement, it was at Big Pink, the house that Danko rented. When you listen through either the official set, or the five volume The Genuine Basement tapes, Danko's bass is omnipresent, loping its way loudly and proudly through every song. Danko is the voice who comes in behind Dylan most often, and like Dylan he had the encyclopaedic knowledge of folk and country music. It was fitting that like Richard Manuel he received the call to collaborate with Dylan. Danko also co-wrote Bessie Smith with Robbie Robertson.
Rick Danko
We would come together every day and work and Dylan would come over. He gave me the typewritten lyrics to 'This Wheel's On Fire'. At that time I was teaching myself to play the piano. … Some music I had written on the piano the day before just seemed to fit with Dylan's lyrics. I worked on the phrasing and the melody. Then Dylan and I wrote the chorus together.
Three basement songs made it to Big Pink, Tears of Rage, This Wheel's On Fire, and I Shall Be Released and in all cases they were radically improved; vocals, arrangements and backing all show a major leap from the basement versions. Half of Music From Big Pink was done in New York City over just two sessions - Tears of Rage, Chest Fever, We Can Talk, This Wheel's On Fire and The Weight. They were recorded on a four track machine (as was Sergeant Pepper). The Band laid down the instrumental live on tracks 1 and 2, put horns on track three and vocals and tambourine on the fourth track. Producer John Simon has mentioned the wonderful acoustics of A & R studio where it was recorded.
Levon Helm
Garth got some distinctive sounds on that track by running a telegraph key through a Roxochord toy organ. Garth just hit that key when he wanted on that song. I thought we'd cut a pretty good take on it, but when we got back to New York from California, there were problems.
John Simon
The snare drum wasn't loud enough on our four track recording, so Levon had to go back into the studio and overdub the snare, an awful chore. When it was over, Levon growls at me, 'Don't lemmee ever have to do that again."
Greil Marcus has commented that This Wheel's On Fire and I Shall Be Released seem not to fit the mood and style of the album. He even says that they sound like fillers on an album that needs nothing of the sort. Hoskyns repeats the same criticisms. I entirely disagree. Perhaps Marcus had got fixed onto the basement interpretations with Dylan before he heard Big Pink. (The acetate was known, though the bootlegs weren't). I think that both Marcus and Hoskyns are showing (or repeating in Hoskyns case) the normal prejudices of Dylan snobs. Only an elite few can have heard the Dylan version first. For most of the world, the Julie Driscoll, Band and Byrds versions were familiar before they found someone to sell them a bootleg of the basement tapes.
My first meeting with This Wheel's On Fire was the Julie Driscoll / Brian Auger British #5 hit version, which I saw performed live twice in quick succession. Julie Driscoll (now Julie Tippetts) had been touring Britain for four years with Steampacket, a band that featured three vocalists, Driscoll, Rod Stewart and Long John Baldry, with Brian Auger on organ. I'm told Reg Dwight (aka Elton John) was on piano, and I guess I saw Steampacket four or five times. I didn't notice, but this was before the glasses and costumes. When the male vocalists left for fame and solo fortune, the remnant became Brian Auger and The Trinity, and they were one of the earliest fortunate recipients of the basement acetate. The Driscoll version gave the song a spacey, ethereal treatment.
Phil Johnson
If youy listen to her work with Auger now, it still sounds hip, and Julie's voice is quite outstanding. Even then the normal soul vocabulary of generic slurs and slides is made utterly distinctive by rough, throaty sandpaper-textured burrs that are as close to Celtic folk-music as they are to Memphis.
When I first saw that Big Pink cover and looked at the back, the inclusion of two favourites, this and The Weight pushed me to buy it. Because my first contact was with the Driscoll version, I totally fail to comprehend the carping by Marcus and Hoskyns. None of the other versions match the sweep of the Band's take on song nor especially do they match Danko's voice. Even so, the Julie Driscoll vocal also stands the test of time, and Brian Auger's backing is second-only to The Band. On The Band version, Rick's voice sounds as if it's at the end of a long session with many takes which adds to the atmospherics.
Paul Williams
"This Wheel's On Fire" - the album version adds some 1975 overdubs (drums, piano) to the original recording, but either way it sounds great - is a beautiful and chilling piece of double talk, or dream talk, working off the recurring phrase "If your memory serves you well" and punctuated by the fabulously dramatic "wheel's on fire" chorus (which works even though there's no obvious connection between the words of the verses and the words of the chorus). The song is really circular, chorus breathlessly tumbling into each verse and each verse opening and closing with the same words, rolling forward in an ever increasing tension, releasing again and again and yet still building, still unresolved. What does it mean? It's like a dream. It does and doesn't have to do with certain things that happened; does and doesn't refer to events that may still happen, or are happening now. What does it mean? Maybe nothing. Some songs don't have meanings; they overflow with feelings instead.
Robert Shelton
The title comes from the biblical prophet Ezekiel's vision, recounted in a black spiritual "Ezekiel Saw the Wheel." The image of man's life as a wheel of fortune appears in Chaucer and other medieval literature. Shakespeare described King Lear in decline as "bound upon a wheel of fire". Dylan's shadowy narrator is a returning traveller who develops a vague personal tale into a grim portent of the future - fire and explosion as the mysterious wheel rolls forward. A motorcycle wheel causing a personal explosion? In "Writings and Drawings" Dylan's jaunty sketches convert this wheel into a plaything. "Wheel" contains some of Dylan's most opaque writing, yet the song builds firmly in a series of tension-and-release peaks. Sometimes the words' sonoroties become more important than their literal sense.
Greil Marcus
As the men and women before the preacher crane their heads to place his words, he traces a rolling deliberate rhythm, with his voice, with his hands, stepping into his famous sermon on the Book of Revelation, a soliloquay the crowd knows as "This Wheel's On Fire." It's a story the preacher has told for years, but his listeners are rapt and still because neither he nor they have ever gotten to the bottom of it.
Greil Marcus also describes the songs narrator as a "squinting mystic", which I like. Re-read the last line of each of the comments above. They all return to the same point, you get the feeling, but you can't interpret what the lyrics are about. Andy Gill has a good attempt:
Andy Gill
Given suitably enigmatic melody by Rick Danko, Dylan's lyric draws again on Shakespeare's King Lear … itself inspired by the biblical visions of Ezekiel, possibly the Old Testament's nuttiest prophet - to offer what seems like a mea culpa for past transgressions, a moment of self revelation in which the singer realizes that in order to get to this, it was necessary for him to go through that. The road down which the flaming wheel rolls is of course the road of excess, which Rimbaud claimed, leads to the palace of wisdom. … The mood of the song is far more portentous, capturing a soul suspended on the cusp of torment and deliverance, unable to arrest its headlong drive towards destruction, yet aware of the tasks which have to be completed. It is virtually impossible not to see the locked wheel of Dylan's Triumph 500 in the title, the very wheel upon which his own accelerating pursuit of disaster was borne so swiftly, and then arrested so abruptly. The verses brim with unfinished business, anchored by the certainty that "we shall meet again."
Something else that becomes apparent is that all Dylan commentators read each other. "We shall meet again" / "This wheel shall explode" interests me. In American English, shall has a particularly strong sense of certainty attached to it, and is a favoured Dylan word. I was once told straightfaced by an American editor that "shall" does not exist in American English. I advised her to read the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution while I played I Shall Be Released, We Shall Overcome and This Wheel's On Fire. I can't offer any sensible interpretation either. I always saw it as a companion piece to We Can Talk, full of memorable lines which create an idea, but which don't bear analysis. I've often been guilty of finding the biblical and Shakesperean links myself, but I don't get the connection with "being bound upon wheels of fire". I see a fiery vision, but the headlong rush of urgency brings the motorcycle to mind first, and more especially sudden success - hot, untouchable, unstoppable, hurtling forward, possibly doomed (but possibly exploding into success):
Please notify my next of kin, this wheel shall explode
Notify my next of kin is a phrase from a last will and testament, or a police report - the next of kin have been notified . Shall shows inevitability. Open up the original Music From Big Pink cover, and that same legal phrase "Next of kin" is the label overprinted on the family photo.
Rick Danko
Those first royalty checks we got almost killed some of us. 'This Wheel's On Fire' was never really a hit, but it had been recorded by a few people, and all of a sudden I got a couple of hundred thousand dollars out of left field. This was half the writer's royalty from one song. We were all shocked at these windfalls we never dreamed existed. Dealin' with this wasn't in the fucking manual, man! If you've never made a million dollars overnight, like we did. You have no concept of what it can do. We saw it ruin people, kill them! Suddenly we had all the money we needed and people were falling over themselves to make us happy, which meant giving us all the dope we could stand. People wanted to turn us on for free, do favors, and some of us were happy to be taken care of like that. There wasn't anything real dramatic about it, because it was a fact of life, and probably still is. I'm here to tell you that it's a crying shame to see what success can do to some people. I'm sure it wasn't the best thing that could have happened to The Band.
Poignant, no?
Sunday, February 28, 2010
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
Long Black Veil
The Band gave itself its name because the folks in it spent a lot of time being "The Band" for individuals like Ronny Hawkins and Bob Dylan. Particularly after spending time with the latter, they became very entrenched in the folk music tradition. "Long Black Veil" is a Music from Big Pink track that combines all of these qualities; it's a cover of a song written by Danny Dill and Marijohn Wilkin, originally recorded by William Orville "Lefty" Frizzell, and it certainly gives off country vibes.
Ten years ago on a cool dark night
There was someone killed 'neath the town hall light
There were few at the scene and they all did agree
That the man who ran looked a lot like me
The judge said "Son, what is your alibi?
If you were somewhere else then you won't have to die"
I spoke not a word although it meant my life
I had been in the arms of my best friend's wife
She walks these hills in a long black veil
She visits my grave where the night winds wail
Nobody knows, no, and nobody sees
Nobody knows but me
The scaffold was high and eternity neared
She stood in the crowd and shed not a tear
But sometimes at night when the cold wind moans
In a long black veil she cries over my bones
Chorus
From Peter Viney's article on the album:
Robbie Robertson:
"I just remembered the song somewhere back in my memory and sang it for Rick one day and he remembered it very well. It fit well with the other songs."
It’s also the song with the most obviously ‘country’ melody and lyric, and has a classic Americana sound and storyline. It is not an old country song at all, and maybe that was part of its appeal to The Band. The song - like much of their work - is a contemporary deliberate creation of a mythologically American piece. It was written by Nashville songwriters Danny Dill (composer of The Streets of Laredo) and Marijohn Wilkin (the writer of Jimmy Dean’s two hits, the JFK-mythologising P.T. Boat 109 and Big Bad John) in March 1959. The Long Black Veil (its full original title) was inspired by the real life murder of a New Jersey priest combined with newspaper accounts of a woman in a black veil who regularly visited Rudolph Valentino’s grave. Dill and Wilkin set out to make it sound like an old Appalachian ballad so as to hang onto the coat tails of the then burgeoning folk music revival. Within days of writing it, they got the then fast-fading country star Lefty Frizell to record the song in March 1959 (with a line-up that included Grady Martin and Harold Bradley on guitars and Marijohn Wilkin on piano). The result was released in May 1959 and the hit record revived Frizell’s career. Other artists have recorded the song, including Johnny Cash, Joan Baez and The Country Gentlemen, but The Band learned the song from Frizell’s original version. The song fits the mood of the album perfectly (it would have fit the next album too).
It’s instructive to compare their version with the Frizell version. Frizell sounds pure country. The accents are in completely different places, the beat is lilting, the drums are played with brushes, and a faint pedal steel plays around in the background. Every hick and hokey technique is on display, from hissing through the teeth on sibillants to a sincere gulp or two when the emotion of the words gets too much.
Then turn to The Band. The sound and words may be country, but on closer examination none of the instrumentation is. Levon slaps the drums with his classic hiccuping sound, this time with a tambourine fixed to the kit. Rick Danko takes the lead vocal with Levon echoing in behind then Richard adding a third layer on the chorus. The acoustic guitar is loud, the organ is prominent and high up, Richard Manuel holds the whole thing together with persistent Wurlitzer electric piano, then the whole thing is underpinned low down both by Danko’s melodic bass line and by John Simon on baritone horn. The instrumental track sounds like nothing except classic Band, but through it all the mood is still the country murder ballad. Danko takes the vocal with as much intensity as Frizell, but Danko is the more subtle actor, though maybe ‘kilt’ for ‘killed’ is over-playing it. He also likes to change voices for the judge’s immortal line, The judge said, "son what is your alibi, if you were someomewhere else then you won’t have to die."
One of Rick Danko’s personal specialities was country music send-ups, and there was always that edge of send-up in it:
Levon Helm:
"We knew it from Lefty Frizell’s version and liked the story of the young man who goes to the gallows for a murder he didn’t commit because his alibi was that he was 'in the arms of his best friend’s wife.' I guess we thought it was funny."
It was a favourite for the group during live performances, but my personal favourite rendition is this one from 1970's Festival Express tour.
Ten years ago on a cool dark night
There was someone killed 'neath the town hall light
There were few at the scene and they all did agree
That the man who ran looked a lot like me
The judge said "Son, what is your alibi?
If you were somewhere else then you won't have to die"
I spoke not a word although it meant my life
I had been in the arms of my best friend's wife
She walks these hills in a long black veil
She visits my grave where the night winds wail
Nobody knows, no, and nobody sees
Nobody knows but me
The scaffold was high and eternity neared
She stood in the crowd and shed not a tear
But sometimes at night when the cold wind moans
In a long black veil she cries over my bones
Chorus
From Peter Viney's article on the album:
Robbie Robertson:
"I just remembered the song somewhere back in my memory and sang it for Rick one day and he remembered it very well. It fit well with the other songs."
It’s also the song with the most obviously ‘country’ melody and lyric, and has a classic Americana sound and storyline. It is not an old country song at all, and maybe that was part of its appeal to The Band. The song - like much of their work - is a contemporary deliberate creation of a mythologically American piece. It was written by Nashville songwriters Danny Dill (composer of The Streets of Laredo) and Marijohn Wilkin (the writer of Jimmy Dean’s two hits, the JFK-mythologising P.T. Boat 109 and Big Bad John) in March 1959. The Long Black Veil (its full original title) was inspired by the real life murder of a New Jersey priest combined with newspaper accounts of a woman in a black veil who regularly visited Rudolph Valentino’s grave. Dill and Wilkin set out to make it sound like an old Appalachian ballad so as to hang onto the coat tails of the then burgeoning folk music revival. Within days of writing it, they got the then fast-fading country star Lefty Frizell to record the song in March 1959 (with a line-up that included Grady Martin and Harold Bradley on guitars and Marijohn Wilkin on piano). The result was released in May 1959 and the hit record revived Frizell’s career. Other artists have recorded the song, including Johnny Cash, Joan Baez and The Country Gentlemen, but The Band learned the song from Frizell’s original version. The song fits the mood of the album perfectly (it would have fit the next album too).
It’s instructive to compare their version with the Frizell version. Frizell sounds pure country. The accents are in completely different places, the beat is lilting, the drums are played with brushes, and a faint pedal steel plays around in the background. Every hick and hokey technique is on display, from hissing through the teeth on sibillants to a sincere gulp or two when the emotion of the words gets too much.
Then turn to The Band. The sound and words may be country, but on closer examination none of the instrumentation is. Levon slaps the drums with his classic hiccuping sound, this time with a tambourine fixed to the kit. Rick Danko takes the lead vocal with Levon echoing in behind then Richard adding a third layer on the chorus. The acoustic guitar is loud, the organ is prominent and high up, Richard Manuel holds the whole thing together with persistent Wurlitzer electric piano, then the whole thing is underpinned low down both by Danko’s melodic bass line and by John Simon on baritone horn. The instrumental track sounds like nothing except classic Band, but through it all the mood is still the country murder ballad. Danko takes the vocal with as much intensity as Frizell, but Danko is the more subtle actor, though maybe ‘kilt’ for ‘killed’ is over-playing it. He also likes to change voices for the judge’s immortal line, The judge said, "son what is your alibi, if you were someomewhere else then you won’t have to die."
One of Rick Danko’s personal specialities was country music send-ups, and there was always that edge of send-up in it:
Levon Helm:
"We knew it from Lefty Frizell’s version and liked the story of the young man who goes to the gallows for a murder he didn’t commit because his alibi was that he was 'in the arms of his best friend’s wife.' I guess we thought it was funny."
It was a favourite for the group during live performances, but my personal favourite rendition is this one from 1970's Festival Express tour.
Thursday, February 11, 2010
Two Manuel compositions
The drummer, the bass player and the pianist all had many turns singing lead in The Band, but my personal favourite was the pianist, Richard Manuel. Manuel composed two other songs all by his lonesome on Music from Big Pink, "We Can Talk" and "Lonesome Suzie". The first of these songs brilliantly illuminates the capacity of the aforementioned trio to harmonize their talents and play to their greatest strengths, with lots of playful metaphors and a melody hinting at a carefree attitude toward life with an underlying deeper meaning. The latter song, "Lonesome Suzie" really draws the listener into the penetrating sense of mourning that Manuel seemed to always understand, and as his life progressed, experience firsthand.
We can talk about it now
It's that same old riddle only starting from the middle
I'd fix it but I don't know how
Well, we could try to reason but you might think it's treason
One voice for all
Echoing across the hall
Don't give up on father clock
We can talk about it now
Come, let me show you how
To keep the wheels turnin' you've got to keep the engine churnin'
Did you ever milk a cow
I had the chance one day but I was all dressed up for Sunday
Everybody, everywhere
Do you really care
Pick up your heads and walk
We can talk about it now
It seems to me we've been holding something underneath our tongues
I'm afraid if you ever got a pat on the back
It would likely burst your lungs
Woh, stop me, if I should sound kinda down in the mouth
But I'd rather be burned in Canada than to freeze here in the south
Pulling that eternal plough
We've got to find a sharper blade or have a new one made
Rest awhile and cool your brow
Don't need it, no need to slave, the whip is in the grave
No salt, no trance
It's safe now to take a backward glance
The leaves have turned to chalk
We can talk about it now,
We can talk about it now
We Can Talk
Levon Helm
"It's a funny song that really captures the way we spoke to one another; lots of outrageous rhymes and corny puns. Richard just got up one morning - or afternoon - sat down at the piano, and started playing this gospel song with its famous line: "But I'd rather be burned up in Canada than to freeze here in the South."
This is a perfect opener for side two, in contrast to Tears of Rage on side one, and another Manuel song. Unlike his other compositions, this is tailor made for the ensemble rather than for a lead vocal by himself. The way the lyrics are swopped between singers, and get lost in the general hurly-burly previews what happens on the next track but one, Chest Fever. Rick and Richard are close in to the mics, Levon appears to be around / across / along the hall. The distance between the perceived positions is accentuated on the remasters. The lines are exchanged, finished for each other, then everything suddenly blends together in a line that sums up their finest vocal work:
'One voice for all, echoing (echoing) around the hall!'
Manuel's writing here is as dense, complex and enigmatic as Robertson's. We Can Talk defies explanation, yet bursts from the lyrics imprint themselves in the mind.
The song is a series of snatches of conversations; perhaps it's emphasising the eventual cameradie among the members of The Band after years on the road (and presumably the inevitable fallings out).
Richard Manuel
"(there's) a whole vocal thing I wasn't aware we had before. I remember thinking "I really like this stuff."
It's all tied together with the wackiest, oddly-accented most fabulous drum track you've ever heard. Greil Marcus sums it up in Mystery Train (devoting more space to this song than almost any other by The Band):
".. a Richard Manuel tune that sounds like the best merry-go-round in the world. Full of exultation, exhortation, smiles and complaints, it is the song of a man who has gone far enough to have become part of what he sings about. 'It's safe now', he says, 'to take a backward glance.'"
Richard Manuel
"The songs that I wrote myself ... I'd usually have a musical idea and then I'd give it a theme, an idea to go with it ... like 'We Can Talk' ... that song ... 'We can talk about it now.'? I just got up one morning and wrote that song. I got that gospel thing on the piano."
Lonesome Suzie, never got the breaks
She's always losing so she sits and cries and shakes
It's so hard just to watch her, and if I touch her
Oh, poor Suzie, I'm wondrin' what to do
She just sits there, hoping for a friend
I don't fit here, but I may have a friend to lend
Maybe I mistook her, but I can't overlook her
Must be someone who can pull her through
Anyone who's felt that bad could tell me what to say
Even if she'd just get mad, she might be better off that way
And where is all the understanding
Her problems can't be that demanding
Why is it she looks that way
Every time she starts to cry?
Lonesome Suzie, I can't watch you cry no longer
If you can use me until you feel a little stronger
I guess just watching you has made me lonesome too
Why don't we get together,
What else can we do?
We can talk about it now
It's that same old riddle only starting from the middle
I'd fix it but I don't know how
Well, we could try to reason but you might think it's treason
One voice for all
Echoing across the hall
Don't give up on father clock
We can talk about it now
Come, let me show you how
To keep the wheels turnin' you've got to keep the engine churnin'
Did you ever milk a cow
I had the chance one day but I was all dressed up for Sunday
Everybody, everywhere
Do you really care
Pick up your heads and walk
We can talk about it now
It seems to me we've been holding something underneath our tongues
I'm afraid if you ever got a pat on the back
It would likely burst your lungs
Woh, stop me, if I should sound kinda down in the mouth
But I'd rather be burned in Canada than to freeze here in the south
Pulling that eternal plough
We've got to find a sharper blade or have a new one made
Rest awhile and cool your brow
Don't need it, no need to slave, the whip is in the grave
No salt, no trance
It's safe now to take a backward glance
The leaves have turned to chalk
We can talk about it now,
We can talk about it now
We Can Talk
Levon Helm
"It's a funny song that really captures the way we spoke to one another; lots of outrageous rhymes and corny puns. Richard just got up one morning - or afternoon - sat down at the piano, and started playing this gospel song with its famous line: "But I'd rather be burned up in Canada than to freeze here in the South."
This is a perfect opener for side two, in contrast to Tears of Rage on side one, and another Manuel song. Unlike his other compositions, this is tailor made for the ensemble rather than for a lead vocal by himself. The way the lyrics are swopped between singers, and get lost in the general hurly-burly previews what happens on the next track but one, Chest Fever. Rick and Richard are close in to the mics, Levon appears to be around / across / along the hall. The distance between the perceived positions is accentuated on the remasters. The lines are exchanged, finished for each other, then everything suddenly blends together in a line that sums up their finest vocal work:
'One voice for all, echoing (echoing) around the hall!'
Manuel's writing here is as dense, complex and enigmatic as Robertson's. We Can Talk defies explanation, yet bursts from the lyrics imprint themselves in the mind.
The song is a series of snatches of conversations; perhaps it's emphasising the eventual cameradie among the members of The Band after years on the road (and presumably the inevitable fallings out).
Richard Manuel
"(there's) a whole vocal thing I wasn't aware we had before. I remember thinking "I really like this stuff."
It's all tied together with the wackiest, oddly-accented most fabulous drum track you've ever heard. Greil Marcus sums it up in Mystery Train (devoting more space to this song than almost any other by The Band):
".. a Richard Manuel tune that sounds like the best merry-go-round in the world. Full of exultation, exhortation, smiles and complaints, it is the song of a man who has gone far enough to have become part of what he sings about. 'It's safe now', he says, 'to take a backward glance.'"
Richard Manuel
"The songs that I wrote myself ... I'd usually have a musical idea and then I'd give it a theme, an idea to go with it ... like 'We Can Talk' ... that song ... 'We can talk about it now.'? I just got up one morning and wrote that song. I got that gospel thing on the piano."
Lonesome Suzie, never got the breaks
She's always losing so she sits and cries and shakes
It's so hard just to watch her, and if I touch her
Oh, poor Suzie, I'm wondrin' what to do
She just sits there, hoping for a friend
I don't fit here, but I may have a friend to lend
Maybe I mistook her, but I can't overlook her
Must be someone who can pull her through
Anyone who's felt that bad could tell me what to say
Even if she'd just get mad, she might be better off that way
And where is all the understanding
Her problems can't be that demanding
Why is it she looks that way
Every time she starts to cry?
Lonesome Suzie, I can't watch you cry no longer
If you can use me until you feel a little stronger
I guess just watching you has made me lonesome too
Why don't we get together,
What else can we do?
Thursday, February 4, 2010
Caledonia Mission
This is the first post of what's probably gonna be a few where I look at the same song from different angles. In this case, it's "Caledonia Mission", written by Robbie Robertson, off Music from Big Pink. This is one of the first cases of Robertson displaying a Dylanesque writing style, and the first instance of Rick Danko singing lead, hinting at the subdued playfulness that marked most of his time in that role.
She reads the leaves and she leads the life
That she learned so well from the old wives
It's so strange to arrange it, you know I wouldn't change it
But hear me if you're near me, can I just rearrange it?
The watchman covers me
With his remedy
I can't see and it's hard to feel
I think his magic might be real
I can't get to you from your garden gate
You know it's always locked by the magistrate
Now he don't care why you cry, he thinks it's just a lie
To get out, I don't doubt that you'd make a try
If the good times get you through
I know the dogs won't bother you
We'll be gone in moonshine time
I've got a place they'll never find
You know I do believe in your hexagram
But can you tell me how they all knew the plan?
Did you trip or slip on their gifts, you know you were just a con?
You knew it, why d'you do it, I've been hiding in the dark
Now I must be on my way
I guess you really have to stay
Inside the mission law
Down in Modock, Arkansas
So, what’s the song about? I accepted the Greil Marcus opinion in Mystery Train for years. Marcus traces the image of ‘The Quester’ through several Band songs:
"Looking for salvation (the quester) ends up trying to save others: the woman of Caledonia Mission (she lives hidden behind a wall and the city has a lock on her gate).
Ronnie Hawkins
"I do understand the lyrics though, and better than most people. That one about Caledonia Mission and being surrounded by Mounties, that was one time they got busted at the border. They’re writing about true things, the things that happened to us along the way."
Levon Helm agrees:
"‘Caledonia Mission’ was Robbie’s and Richard sang the lyrics that alluded to the little problem we’d had with the law a few years earlier."
Though Levon was there, it’s surely Rick singing lead, with Richard singing the high part behind him. Interestingly, however, there's evidence that this wasn't always intended to be the case.
The bust occurred just before they joined with Dylan and had maximum publicity in Toronto. Levon & The Hawks had been trailed by eight RCMP cars for the hundred miles between the U.S. border crossing at Buffalo and Toronto Airport before being arrested. It caused them hassle for years (read Levon’s autobiography for the details).
Rick Danko
"We got set up. This guy was trying to impress my girlfriend. None of us would have known him, but he knew what time we were coming through the border that day, and he told the Royal Canadian Mounted Police that we were bringing in a trunkful of pot."
The singer makes some kind of arrangement with a woman who can foretell the future but lives in some kind of hidebound traditional way. Someone (the watchman) gives the singer a remedy which makes it hard for him to see or feel. He thinks that his magic might be real. The woman is locked away from him, she’s locked away by a magistrate who thinks her tears are a lie, but the singer doesn’t doubt that she wants to escape. The dogs won’t bother her. (sniffer dogs?) He’s got a hiding place they’ll never find (the trunk doesn’t sound that hard to find, but then again The Hawks weren’t bringing in a trunkful of pot anyway), but fate comes in - ‘they’ all knew the plan (they were tipped off). Did she trip or slip on their gifts? (Did she have any part in it?) You know you were just a con. Why did she do it? The singer is hiding out in the dark (or possibly the dawn). He leaves condemning her to stay in the mission (law / hall / walls) down in Modock Arkansas.
The question of the lyrics again. Barney Hoskins calls it ‘a wryly oblique song of longing for a missionary in the non-existent town of Modock, Arkansas’. I always heard it as ‘inside the mission walls’ and ‘old dark Arkansas’. Walls fits with gate, I guess. And that seems to be what Greil Marcus heard too. I assumed Modock was a mistake. More of this later.
Caledonia Mission later reappears in a rather roided up version (bit of a powerful horn section) on the 1971 live album Rock of Ages, with the last line changed from ‘down in Modock Arkansas’ to
inside the mission walls
on a river (bank/bench/branch) of Caledonia
It was also an unexpected revival throughout the 1994 to 1997 live shows. I say ‘unexpected’ because it doesn’t seem to feature on any late 60s / early 70s live tapes. Rick Danko sings this in the 1996 Radio Show version:
inside those mission walls
on a river bank in Caledonia …
In a 1994 tape from the Quatro Club in Tokyo, it’s behind those mission walls (and you can be behind a wall, but hardly ‘behind a law’). Mind you he also sings on a river bank in … Tokyo which has nothing to do with it!
So we have Modock, Arkansas and Caledonia as the setting for the story. Having checked the AAA Road Atlas of Arkansas, there seemed to be no town called Caledonia in Arkansas, though there is a small town called Caledonia just north of Columbus, Mississippi, a good 120 miles east of the Mississippi River, which forms the Arkansas - Mississippi border. Even so, the nearest river to this Caledonia is a couple of miles away on the map. A look back at the AAA atlas reveals a tiny town called ‘Moark’ right below the Arkansas / Missouri border, just off Highway 67 - and taking a runaway across a state line would have been a federal offence (Jerry Lee Lewis and Chuck Berry step forward). I couldn’t find ‘Modock’ at all, but when the first version of this was posted on the web, I discovered from Jimmy P. in Modok, Arkansas that it does indeed exist, and is about twenty miles south of Levon’s home in Helena.
But think about the switch in the lyrics in later years. The bust story mainly involved Rick, and he sings it on stage. I suddenly wondered about Ontario. Back to the atlas, and there it was. Caledonia, on the Grand River a few miles south of Hamilton. Off the main highway, but yes, it’s definitely between the US/Canadian border at Buffalo and Toronto. Ah. (So what was all that stuff about Arkansas then?). Then look again. Caledonia is just inland from Port Dover, which was Levon & The Hawks regular Sunday night gig for awhile. And just below Port Dover is Turkey Point. And Turkey Point Productions deal with Rick Danko’s business affairs nowadays. Levon is quite precise:
"The cops were real proud of themselves. They told us how they had picked us up at the border and followed us all the way into Toronto … ‘You drove so fast we even lost you a couple of times,’ one of them told me. But they were ahead of us too and found us again on the highway that cuts between the lake shore and Route 401. Damn."
Theoretically, you could take the Lake Erie shore road, then cut north through Caledonia to pick up the 401 (which runs from Detroit to Toronto). And that would cut out going through Niagara Falls to the Lake Ontario shore (which looks more logical on the map, but might not be in tourist season). But it still doesn’t figure to me that Caledonia would be so hugely significant in that story that it would title the song. Even if that’s where the RCMP had seen them again, the drama took place at Toronto airport. After reading the first version of this article, Bill Munson looked at Levon’s original account, and noted that he mentions the Metro Police. He adds:
"The airport isn't in Metropolitan Toronto, so the Metropolitan Police wouldn't have been involved in the arrest Metro police wouldn't have been involved in the chase either, as Metro is east of the airport (and the guys were coming from the west) airports are federal land (under Canada's constitution), so any bust would have to have been led by the RCMP (i.e., the federal police force) for charges to stick (or, frankly, even be contemplated) the RCMP would have had a car or two at the border, but the eight cars claimed by Levon could only have come from the Ontario Provincial Police (OPP - whose badge McCartney is wearing on Sergeant Pepper); the OPP has jurisdiction everywhere in Ontario (except on federal land) but is only active on provincial expressways (like the Queen E) and in rural areas without their own municipal forces (i.e., like much of the area travelled that day)"
I think Levon was trying to say that the police refound them on the road that goes from the lakeshore to the 401, which they'd have taken to get to the airport. (The Queen E, or QEW, runs close to the lakeshore and the 401 forms the southern boundary of the airport.) By "the lakeshore", Levon could have been referring either to the shore of the lake or, more likely, to Lakeshore Boulevard / Road, which is the old highway and which all locals call "the Lakeshore."
In other words, the place where the police picked up their trail again was further along from Caledonia, more on the outskirts of Toronto. But they were singing about Caledonia, Ontario. I’d be prepared to bet that. I also think the Arkansas reference could have been a deliberate fictionalisation, a "blind," in 1968, designed to cover the tracks, and divert attention from the actual location, that seemed irrelevant and unnecessary by 1972. Another useful note came in the Guestbook from Greg D:
I've always wondered (since hearing the Rock of Ages version) if the song was related to that place. There is indeed a river flowing through the town (the Grand River, largest river in southern Ontario). Caledonia is know to the Band/Hawks, since, as Peter correctly observed, the town is not too far from Port Dover, where the Hawks used to play, situated on the same highway. Secondly, it is adjacent to the Six Nations Reserve where Robbie used to spend summers as a child. Talking to both Rick and Levon after one of their concerts on the reunion tour of 1983, they both knew where the town was, Rick having driven through the previous night on the way to see his folks in the Simcoe/Turkey Point area.There was never a Mission in the town of Caledonia as far as I know, so I don't know what the line "inside the mission walls (law?)" means.
What about the woman? The bust involved a woman, and there’s no reason why the two stories won’t hang together. It seems reasonable that girlfriends might have come from Caledonia or the area. A mission can be a religious calling, a religious building or simply an intent or plan (Mission Impossible). I think the mission law transcription is quite wrong. I’m certain it’s walls, as in later versions. A walled mission (with a walled garden) brings up pictures of the South-West to me, Arizona or New Mexico. The most famous mission walls in American history are the walls of the Alamo Mission. But any building has walls. The area to the north of Kitchener, Ontario is a center for Mennonite religious communities, and there are more in the Niagara area. Who can tell what sort of mission it might have been? But it points to a woman tied into some kind of religious community, desperate to escape with the singer. The resultant trouble with the law seems connected.
OK, it could all relate to a betrayed attempt to carry something across a border, a runaway seems as likely as dope, maybe it was both. I didn’t find the border necessary, and saw it as more universal, and that is the secret of The Band at their best. I used to see a link to the I-Ching in some of the lines that might apply to the bust story:
It’s so strange to arrange it, you know I wouldn’t change it
But hear me if you’re near me, can I just rearange it… (You throw the sticks and arrange them in lines. There are fixed lines and ‘changing’ lines. A changing line means it rearranges and you read a different interpretation)
You know I do believe in your hexagram … (obviously)
But can you tell me how they all knew the plan … (Yeah, the I-Ching works, it foretells the future, but how do "they" know what’s going to happen)
The I-Ching was a surprisingly ‘hippy-friendly’ theme for Big Pink though, and no quotes (known to me) back it up as the main story. And of course the woman reads the tea leaves as well as reading the hexagrams.
The stories may be based in real events, but are polished into a mythic dimension. My guess is that the relationship story is part of the bust story. I also think that without seeing the Ronnie Hawkins or Levon quotes, the relationship story is more obvious (Greil Marcus and Barny Hoskyns picked it up first, though where Hoskyns gets a missionary from I don’t know). The 1968 Band seemed to want to keep it secret too.
Caledonia is interesting as a name. First, even The Band seem confused between ‘Caldonia’ (Louis Jordan tune later covered by Muddy Waters, now part of their stage act) and ‘Caledonia Mission’. On the box set, ‘Caledonia Mission’ (Rock of Ages) is wrongly titled ‘Caldonia Mission’, and in his book, Levon adds an aside that ‘I believe (Miss Fanny) looked a lot like Caledonia’ (which must mean Caldonia). On the New Orleans laser disc, they list ‘Caledonia’, but perform ‘Caldonia’. Then again, the blues tune must have been an abbreviated form of "Caledonia" or even a misspelling. Caledonia is the original Roman name for Northern Britain, later becoming restricted to Scotland. Van Morrison named his seventies touring group, The Caledonia Soul Orchestra.
The song has not had many airings on official releases, and doesn’t appear on 1969 to 1990 tapes either. It was missed off the compilations until the box set. It has been a constant in recent (1994 to 1997) Band live shows, with Rick Danko moving to acoustic guitar and taking lead vocal, and Randy Ciarlante playing bass. This is a pity. I’ve nothing against Ciarlante’s bass playing on the song, but Rick’s 1968 bass line is one of his great melodic lines pulling the story along. Another note in the Guestbook from B. Gold recalls Robbie switching to bass for this number in a live show at the Filmore East.
She reads the leaves and she leads the life
That she learned so well from the old wives
It's so strange to arrange it, you know I wouldn't change it
But hear me if you're near me, can I just rearrange it?
The watchman covers me
With his remedy
I can't see and it's hard to feel
I think his magic might be real
I can't get to you from your garden gate
You know it's always locked by the magistrate
Now he don't care why you cry, he thinks it's just a lie
To get out, I don't doubt that you'd make a try
If the good times get you through
I know the dogs won't bother you
We'll be gone in moonshine time
I've got a place they'll never find
You know I do believe in your hexagram
But can you tell me how they all knew the plan?
Did you trip or slip on their gifts, you know you were just a con?
You knew it, why d'you do it, I've been hiding in the dark
Now I must be on my way
I guess you really have to stay
Inside the mission law
Down in Modock, Arkansas
So, what’s the song about? I accepted the Greil Marcus opinion in Mystery Train for years. Marcus traces the image of ‘The Quester’ through several Band songs:
"Looking for salvation (the quester) ends up trying to save others: the woman of Caledonia Mission (she lives hidden behind a wall and the city has a lock on her gate).
Ronnie Hawkins
"I do understand the lyrics though, and better than most people. That one about Caledonia Mission and being surrounded by Mounties, that was one time they got busted at the border. They’re writing about true things, the things that happened to us along the way."
Levon Helm agrees:
"‘Caledonia Mission’ was Robbie’s and Richard sang the lyrics that alluded to the little problem we’d had with the law a few years earlier."
Though Levon was there, it’s surely Rick singing lead, with Richard singing the high part behind him. Interestingly, however, there's evidence that this wasn't always intended to be the case.
The bust occurred just before they joined with Dylan and had maximum publicity in Toronto. Levon & The Hawks had been trailed by eight RCMP cars for the hundred miles between the U.S. border crossing at Buffalo and Toronto Airport before being arrested. It caused them hassle for years (read Levon’s autobiography for the details).
Rick Danko
"We got set up. This guy was trying to impress my girlfriend. None of us would have known him, but he knew what time we were coming through the border that day, and he told the Royal Canadian Mounted Police that we were bringing in a trunkful of pot."
The singer makes some kind of arrangement with a woman who can foretell the future but lives in some kind of hidebound traditional way. Someone (the watchman) gives the singer a remedy which makes it hard for him to see or feel. He thinks that his magic might be real. The woman is locked away from him, she’s locked away by a magistrate who thinks her tears are a lie, but the singer doesn’t doubt that she wants to escape. The dogs won’t bother her. (sniffer dogs?) He’s got a hiding place they’ll never find (the trunk doesn’t sound that hard to find, but then again The Hawks weren’t bringing in a trunkful of pot anyway), but fate comes in - ‘they’ all knew the plan (they were tipped off). Did she trip or slip on their gifts? (Did she have any part in it?) You know you were just a con. Why did she do it? The singer is hiding out in the dark (or possibly the dawn). He leaves condemning her to stay in the mission (law / hall / walls) down in Modock Arkansas.
The question of the lyrics again. Barney Hoskins calls it ‘a wryly oblique song of longing for a missionary in the non-existent town of Modock, Arkansas’. I always heard it as ‘inside the mission walls’ and ‘old dark Arkansas’. Walls fits with gate, I guess. And that seems to be what Greil Marcus heard too. I assumed Modock was a mistake. More of this later.
Caledonia Mission later reappears in a rather roided up version (bit of a powerful horn section) on the 1971 live album Rock of Ages, with the last line changed from ‘down in Modock Arkansas’ to
inside the mission walls
on a river (bank/bench/branch) of Caledonia
It was also an unexpected revival throughout the 1994 to 1997 live shows. I say ‘unexpected’ because it doesn’t seem to feature on any late 60s / early 70s live tapes. Rick Danko sings this in the 1996 Radio Show version:
inside those mission walls
on a river bank in Caledonia …
In a 1994 tape from the Quatro Club in Tokyo, it’s behind those mission walls (and you can be behind a wall, but hardly ‘behind a law’). Mind you he also sings on a river bank in … Tokyo which has nothing to do with it!
So we have Modock, Arkansas and Caledonia as the setting for the story. Having checked the AAA Road Atlas of Arkansas, there seemed to be no town called Caledonia in Arkansas, though there is a small town called Caledonia just north of Columbus, Mississippi, a good 120 miles east of the Mississippi River, which forms the Arkansas - Mississippi border. Even so, the nearest river to this Caledonia is a couple of miles away on the map. A look back at the AAA atlas reveals a tiny town called ‘Moark’ right below the Arkansas / Missouri border, just off Highway 67 - and taking a runaway across a state line would have been a federal offence (Jerry Lee Lewis and Chuck Berry step forward). I couldn’t find ‘Modock’ at all, but when the first version of this was posted on the web, I discovered from Jimmy P. in Modok, Arkansas that it does indeed exist, and is about twenty miles south of Levon’s home in Helena.
But think about the switch in the lyrics in later years. The bust story mainly involved Rick, and he sings it on stage. I suddenly wondered about Ontario. Back to the atlas, and there it was. Caledonia, on the Grand River a few miles south of Hamilton. Off the main highway, but yes, it’s definitely between the US/Canadian border at Buffalo and Toronto. Ah. (So what was all that stuff about Arkansas then?). Then look again. Caledonia is just inland from Port Dover, which was Levon & The Hawks regular Sunday night gig for awhile. And just below Port Dover is Turkey Point. And Turkey Point Productions deal with Rick Danko’s business affairs nowadays. Levon is quite precise:
"The cops were real proud of themselves. They told us how they had picked us up at the border and followed us all the way into Toronto … ‘You drove so fast we even lost you a couple of times,’ one of them told me. But they were ahead of us too and found us again on the highway that cuts between the lake shore and Route 401. Damn."
Theoretically, you could take the Lake Erie shore road, then cut north through Caledonia to pick up the 401 (which runs from Detroit to Toronto). And that would cut out going through Niagara Falls to the Lake Ontario shore (which looks more logical on the map, but might not be in tourist season). But it still doesn’t figure to me that Caledonia would be so hugely significant in that story that it would title the song. Even if that’s where the RCMP had seen them again, the drama took place at Toronto airport. After reading the first version of this article, Bill Munson looked at Levon’s original account, and noted that he mentions the Metro Police. He adds:
"The airport isn't in Metropolitan Toronto, so the Metropolitan Police wouldn't have been involved in the arrest Metro police wouldn't have been involved in the chase either, as Metro is east of the airport (and the guys were coming from the west) airports are federal land (under Canada's constitution), so any bust would have to have been led by the RCMP (i.e., the federal police force) for charges to stick (or, frankly, even be contemplated) the RCMP would have had a car or two at the border, but the eight cars claimed by Levon could only have come from the Ontario Provincial Police (OPP - whose badge McCartney is wearing on Sergeant Pepper); the OPP has jurisdiction everywhere in Ontario (except on federal land) but is only active on provincial expressways (like the Queen E) and in rural areas without their own municipal forces (i.e., like much of the area travelled that day)"
I think Levon was trying to say that the police refound them on the road that goes from the lakeshore to the 401, which they'd have taken to get to the airport. (The Queen E, or QEW, runs close to the lakeshore and the 401 forms the southern boundary of the airport.) By "the lakeshore", Levon could have been referring either to the shore of the lake or, more likely, to Lakeshore Boulevard / Road, which is the old highway and which all locals call "the Lakeshore."
In other words, the place where the police picked up their trail again was further along from Caledonia, more on the outskirts of Toronto. But they were singing about Caledonia, Ontario. I’d be prepared to bet that. I also think the Arkansas reference could have been a deliberate fictionalisation, a "blind," in 1968, designed to cover the tracks, and divert attention from the actual location, that seemed irrelevant and unnecessary by 1972. Another useful note came in the Guestbook from Greg D:
I've always wondered (since hearing the Rock of Ages version) if the song was related to that place. There is indeed a river flowing through the town (the Grand River, largest river in southern Ontario). Caledonia is know to the Band/Hawks, since, as Peter correctly observed, the town is not too far from Port Dover, where the Hawks used to play, situated on the same highway. Secondly, it is adjacent to the Six Nations Reserve where Robbie used to spend summers as a child. Talking to both Rick and Levon after one of their concerts on the reunion tour of 1983, they both knew where the town was, Rick having driven through the previous night on the way to see his folks in the Simcoe/Turkey Point area.There was never a Mission in the town of Caledonia as far as I know, so I don't know what the line "inside the mission walls (law?)" means.
What about the woman? The bust involved a woman, and there’s no reason why the two stories won’t hang together. It seems reasonable that girlfriends might have come from Caledonia or the area. A mission can be a religious calling, a religious building or simply an intent or plan (Mission Impossible). I think the mission law transcription is quite wrong. I’m certain it’s walls, as in later versions. A walled mission (with a walled garden) brings up pictures of the South-West to me, Arizona or New Mexico. The most famous mission walls in American history are the walls of the Alamo Mission. But any building has walls. The area to the north of Kitchener, Ontario is a center for Mennonite religious communities, and there are more in the Niagara area. Who can tell what sort of mission it might have been? But it points to a woman tied into some kind of religious community, desperate to escape with the singer. The resultant trouble with the law seems connected.
OK, it could all relate to a betrayed attempt to carry something across a border, a runaway seems as likely as dope, maybe it was both. I didn’t find the border necessary, and saw it as more universal, and that is the secret of The Band at their best. I used to see a link to the I-Ching in some of the lines that might apply to the bust story:
It’s so strange to arrange it, you know I wouldn’t change it
But hear me if you’re near me, can I just rearange it… (You throw the sticks and arrange them in lines. There are fixed lines and ‘changing’ lines. A changing line means it rearranges and you read a different interpretation)
You know I do believe in your hexagram … (obviously)
But can you tell me how they all knew the plan … (Yeah, the I-Ching works, it foretells the future, but how do "they" know what’s going to happen)
The I-Ching was a surprisingly ‘hippy-friendly’ theme for Big Pink though, and no quotes (known to me) back it up as the main story. And of course the woman reads the tea leaves as well as reading the hexagrams.
The stories may be based in real events, but are polished into a mythic dimension. My guess is that the relationship story is part of the bust story. I also think that without seeing the Ronnie Hawkins or Levon quotes, the relationship story is more obvious (Greil Marcus and Barny Hoskyns picked it up first, though where Hoskyns gets a missionary from I don’t know). The 1968 Band seemed to want to keep it secret too.
Caledonia is interesting as a name. First, even The Band seem confused between ‘Caldonia’ (Louis Jordan tune later covered by Muddy Waters, now part of their stage act) and ‘Caledonia Mission’. On the box set, ‘Caledonia Mission’ (Rock of Ages) is wrongly titled ‘Caldonia Mission’, and in his book, Levon adds an aside that ‘I believe (Miss Fanny) looked a lot like Caledonia’ (which must mean Caldonia). On the New Orleans laser disc, they list ‘Caledonia’, but perform ‘Caldonia’. Then again, the blues tune must have been an abbreviated form of "Caledonia" or even a misspelling. Caledonia is the original Roman name for Northern Britain, later becoming restricted to Scotland. Van Morrison named his seventies touring group, The Caledonia Soul Orchestra.
The song has not had many airings on official releases, and doesn’t appear on 1969 to 1990 tapes either. It was missed off the compilations until the box set. It has been a constant in recent (1994 to 1997) Band live shows, with Rick Danko moving to acoustic guitar and taking lead vocal, and Randy Ciarlante playing bass. This is a pity. I’ve nothing against Ciarlante’s bass playing on the song, but Rick’s 1968 bass line is one of his great melodic lines pulling the story along. Another note in the Guestbook from B. Gold recalls Robbie switching to bass for this number in a live show at the Filmore East.
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