Thinking a lot about the great Levon Helm the last few days, though that happens pretty steadily since I often come back around to listening to The Band. I went through a spell with the remastered Stage Fright not too long ago. Some die-hard fans and Robbie Robertson detractors didn’t like that Robbie re-sequenced the album to the original planned order. I had no issue with that, and the sound is exceptional. Especially with Levon’s drums. The remastered The Band album is phenomenal, the best of the bunch. Levon sounds incredible on it, vocally and musically. His playing was on the money. No other drummer could have handled the breakdown portion of “Rag Mama Rag” the way he did. Check it out, about 1:00 in…

I began to really appreciate Levon from his playing on Bob Dylan’s Planet Waves, which hit #1 50 years ago today for the first of four straight weeks. Despite the legendary association of Dylan and The Band, Planet Waves is the only studio album they recorded together. Even though The Band was used to the ways Dylan operated, with few takes or even much run down before recording, the lack of any familiarity with the songs ahead of the sessions had them playing by near total instinct. Levon’s playing throughout is both tight and loose, a little behind the beat but in the pocket throughout. The album is most famous for “Forever Young,” which Dylan has performed nearly 500 times. But he has returned to the album sporadically over the years. “Going Going Gone” was a mainstay of the ’78 tour, the sublime “Hazel” made a few rare appearances over the years, though not since 2005. The best songs, “Dirge” and “Never Say Goodbye,” have never been performed live, but on two occasions in 1990, “You Angel You” made the set:

But back to Levon. In the late 90’s, he was down for the count. Voice wiped out from throat cancer, pre-Midnight Ramble era at his barn, basically not working at all. He was doing one steady gig though, playing drums in a blues covers band on Wednesday’s at The Joyous Lake in Woodstock. I don’t even remember how I heard about it, but I drove myself up there one week to see him. The place was tiny. I got there early, a couple of people in the band were setting up. The door opened and in walked Levon. Not too many years earlier he was playing arenas. But here he was, setting up the drums himself, but not showing any bitterness or a chip on his shoulder. When he was done setting up, he walked around saying hello to people, including me. I was speechless that he’d come over and say hello, but he did, and thanked me for coming out to the show. He could barely talk but he asked where I was from, told me he remembered playing in the town where I lived then, and he thanked me again for driving all the way up. He played for 50 people that night the same way he played with The Band. Afterwards he was chatting with the band, saw me from across the room, waved, and soon came over to tell me to be careful driving. He also told me to let him know when I got home. I laughed and asked him how, and he said “I’m in the book.” There was a pay phone in the bar with a local phone book, and he was in fact in the book, as M.L. Helm. I didn’t call when I got home though. But had I, I know he’d have thanked me for calling.

As the years progressed, he got himself together, had the instinct to make Larry Campbell his music director after Larry left Dylan’s band, got his voice back, took the Midnight Ramble band on the road, made two solo albums, and experienced a true comeback. Perfect. He never lost his connection to music. He said “If you pour some music on whatever’s wrong, it’ll sure help out.”

He never did patch things up with Robbie.

I loved Levon. I loved The Band. I loved Robbie. Levon was a singer and drummer second to none. He ran into terrible financial problems over the years, some of his own doing, some from bad luck, and eventually from a lack of employment and lessening royalties. It’s well documented how Levon felt about Robbie, his one-time brother, now the man he blamed for ripping The Band off by stealing the publishing. Levon felt they’d all contributed to the songs but when the albums came out, the credit was to Robertson. He never mentioned this feeling in all the years they were together and never addressed it to Robbie directly. It’s the role of a band member to make his part the best it can be so the song is as great as it can be. That’s the job and Levon did it exceptionally well. But he didn’t write the songs. On the ultra-rare occasion he did have more input, there were co-writing credits. Same for Rick and Garth Hudson. Levon’s solo career bares it out that he wasn’t a songwriter. If he were one, then where are all the Helm writing credits on his solo albums? He was a phenomenal musician, but not a songwriter. Richard Manuel wrote in the early years but he was all but spent in that department by their third album. Danko wrote a bit but not much. Robbie wrote the songs, and a great many are classics because Levon, Rick or Richard sang them, doing their parts to make the songs as great as they could be. And they did.

Today’s Playlist is a SomethingIsHappening compendium of some of Levon Helm’s best performances, in The Band and on his own:

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