Music

The Beatles, Part Two – There Went the Sun

Sgt Peppers and The Beatles (“the White Album”) set a bar that was hard to follow. Although The Beatles first made an album initially called Get Back which would later be released as Let It Be, they released Abbey Road first. Though I liked it, it was frustrating to listen to a medley of less than two minute songs followed by “The End” at 2:05. I was disappointed that songs I liked were so briefly there and gone. Only two out of the eleven songs on side two were over three minutes. But I still liked the album, and it’s grown on me over the years to become my favorite Beatles album.

George Harrison grew as a songwriter with “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” and “Long, Long, Long” and had two of the best three songs on Abbey Road with “Here Comes the Sun” and “Something,” which was covered by over 150 artists, including Frank Sinatra, who mistakenly called it his favorite Lennon/McCartney song. Sinatra also called it “the greatest love song of the last 50 years.” Lennon thought it was the best song on the album and McCartney said it was his favorite Harrison song. Several critics praised it as having Harrison’s finest guitar playing.

The album starts with Lennon’s “Come Together,” which was catchy but weird for me: “Hold you in his arms, yeah/You can feel his disease.” It’s followed by “Something,” which soars with a wonderful melody and some of Harrison’s best guitar playing, then McCartney’s amusing “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer.” Then comes “Oh, Darling,” a rock and roller that’s one of McCartney’s best screamers where his voice breaks and drops at the end of a line with a Buddy Holley hiccup. It’s as passionately intense as anything of McCartney’s I’ve ever heard.

Ringo pitches in with the lighthearted “Octopus’s Garden,” an entertaining fantasy that tickled me like a kid. I wondered if he composed it as a song for his kids. It seems to sort of fit with “Yellow Submarine.” Side two begins with “Here Comes the Sun,” which is almost impossible to not sing along with. The guitar part is just a beautiful ride that runs over and over in my head after every time I listen to it.

“You Never Give Me Your Money” is a four-minute McCartney tune with the tempo changes that became common in McCartney’s solo work and with Wings (“Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey” and “Band on the Run”). It starts slow with a piano accompaniment and prominent drumbeat in a ballad mode voicing the sadness of missed communication as each “break[s] down,” then it speeds up with a rocking rhythm lamenting that “All the money’s gone, nowhere to go,” then slowing down again to wonder where the “magic feeling” went. Then it speeds up again as they escape in a limousine saying “What a sweet dream/Came true today.” How “all the money’s gone” fits with escaping in a limousine is anybody’s guess. But it’s a song I love.

You never give me your money

You only give me your funny paper

And in the middle of negotiations

You break down

I never give you my number

I only give you my situation

And in the middle of investigation

I break down

Out of college, money spent

See no future, pay no rent

All the money's gone, nowhere to go

At a job I got the sack

Monday morning, turning back

Yellow lorry slow, nowhere to go

But oh, that magic feeling

Nowhere to go

Oh, that magic feeling

Nowhere to go

Ah, ah, ah

What a sweet dream

Pick up the bags and get in the limousine

Soon we'll be away from here

Step on the gas and wipe that tear away

What a sweet dream

Came true today . . .

Yes it did

After the mellow “The Sun King,” the rest of the album is taken up with a medley of two short Lennon songs and a string of McCartney tunes, all between one and two minutes long. I love “She Came in through the Bathroom Window,” written after a fan actually did that to get into Paul’s house. Harrison, plays wonderful electric guitar fills between lines and verses, and Ringo’s drumming is tasty as always without showing off.

She came in through the bathroom window

Protected by a silver spoon

But now she sucks her thumb and wanders

By the banks of her own lagoon

Didn't anybody tell her?

Didn't anybody see?

Sunday's on the phone to Monday

Tuesday's on the phone to me

She said she'd always been a dancer

She worked at 15 clubs a day

And though she thought I knew the answer

Well I knew but I could not say

And so I quit the police department

And got myself a steady job

And though she tried her best to help me

She could steal but she could not rob.

They’re intriguing lyrics: she seems to change identities. How does “protected by a silver spoon” fit with being a dancer working at “fifteen clubs a day?” Who could imagine Paul McCartney stealing, let alone robbing? But most folk and rock musicians identify themselves with outlaws, from Woody Guthrie to Dylan to McCartney, including “Band on the Run.”

“Golden Slumbers” is half all-out wail and half gentle lullaby. It starts soft, goes to almost screaming, then ends with the lullaby singing a child to sleep. And I love how both parts fit together. I just wished both these songs were longer.

“Carry That Weight” starts briefly with “Boy, you’re gonna carry that weight/Carry that weight a long time,” the horns move in with the melody of “You Never Give Me Your Money” with new lyrics and a guitar solo by George: “I never give you my pillow/I only send you my invitation/ And in the middle of the celebration/I break down.” Only a minute and a half, the four Beatles sing together on this, as Lennon, McCartney, and Harrison did on “Because” and “Sun King.” I love Harrison’s guitar playing on these late albums when he asserted his own style instead of letting McCartney and Lennon influence how he played. He rarely plays fast with a lot of notes like Clapton, but he plays with a wonderful expressiveness, like a smooth Robbie Robertson.

“The End” is rock and roll driven by Ringo’s great drumming as almost a lead instrument, with Harrison coming in on a great guitar solo until it slows down with a light piano to assert that “And in the end/The love you take/Is equal to/The love you make” before finishing with Ringo’s drumming and another brief electric guitar fill by Harrison. It’s an intriguing statement to ponder. “The End” is followed by “Good Night,” a lovely lullaby by John, reportedly written for his son Julian but also sounding like he’s saying good night for The Beatles.

Now it's time to say good night

Good night, sleep tight

Now the sun turns out his light

Good night, sleep tight

Dream sweet dreams for me (Dream sweet)

Dream sweet dreams for you

Close your eyes and I'll close mine

Good night, sleep tight

Now the moon begins to shine

Good night, sleep tight

Dream sweet dreams for me (Dream sweet)

Dream sweet dreams for you

Good night, good night, everybody

Everybody everywhere

Good night

The album ends with the lovely and brisk “Her Majesty,” an apparent homage to The Queen:

I imagine she’s a pretty nice girl

But she doesn't have a lot to say

I imagine she’s a pretty nice girl

But she changes from day to day

I wanna tell her that I love her a lot

But I gotta get a belly full of wine

I imagine she’s a pretty nice girl

Someday I'm gonna make her mine, oh yeah

Someday I'm gonna make her mine.

Ultimately I learned to enjoy the medley for what it is, as a medley. Though I think the “White Album” is their best, I enjoy listening to Abbey Road now more than any other Beatles album.

Let It Be, originally titled Get Back and recorded before Abbey Road, was released in May of 1970. It sold well but had a very mixed critical reception, more negative than positive. Opinion has been more favorable over time, though. I liked it a lot from the beginning. I think I saw the movie with the unannounced performance from Apple Studio’s rooftop before I got the album.

The album starts off with “Two of Us,” an engaging Lennon and McCartney duet. It’s hard to know which songs are more Lennon or more McCartney because they’re all signed Lennon/McCartney, but even though a duet this sounds like a Lennon song to me. Accompanied by a slapping drum rhythm and a couple of understated acoustic guitars, it paints a picture of two people driving in the country with no particular destination, enjoying each other’s company and heading for home.

You and me Sunday driving

Not arriving

On our way back home

We're on our way home

We're going home

Two of us sending postcards

Writing letters

On my wall

You and me burning matches

Lifting latches

On our way back home

We're on our way home

We're going home

You and I have memories

Longer than the road that stretches out ahead

Lennon’s “Across the Universe” is a slow and dreamy, mystical tune with some beautiful poetry in it.

Words are flowing out like endless rain into a paper cup

They slither wildly as they slip away across the universe

Pools of sorrow, waves of joy are drifting through my opened mind

Possessing and caressing me

Jai Guru Deva, Om

Nothing's gonna change my world

Images of broken light which dance before me like a million eyes

They call me on and on across the universe

Thoughts meander like a restless wind inside a letter box

They tumble blindly as they make their way across the universe

The song’s accompaniment has a simple acoustic guitar, backed with strings orchestrated by the famous or infamous Phil Spector. Lennon and Harrison had brought him in because of the supposed poor quality of the recording. It’s a tune with a slow serene melody and a very pleasant one to listen to, but McCartney hated the result. I don’t hear anything problematic with the guitar accompaniment and the singing, so I’m not sure what Lennon and Harrison didn’t like. The album was later reissued without strings as Let It Be … Naked.

“I’ve Got a Feeling” is a lazy rocker with McCartney singing the first two minutes, then Lennon comes in for two verses. It finishes with Lennon and McCartney weaving his lyrics around Lennon’s. It’s like they blended two songs with different lyrics into one with an infectious result. Harrison weaves good guitar lines around the lyrics that gives the song some drive.

I've got a feeling, a feeling deep inside (McCartney)

Oh yeah, oh yeah, that's right

I've got a feeling, a feeling I can't hide

Oh no, no, oh no, oh no

Yeah, I've got a feeling

All these years I've been wandering around

Wondering how come nobody told me

All that I've been looking for was somebody

Who looked like you

I've got a feeling that keeps me on my toes

Oh yeah, oh yeah

I've got a feeling I think that everybody knows

Oh yeah, oh yeah, oh yeah

Yeah, yeah I've got a feeling, yeah, yeah

Everybody had a hard year (Lennon)

Everybody had a good time

Everybody had a wet dream

Everybody saw the sunshine

Oh yeah, oh yeah, oh yeah

Everybody had a good year

Everybody let their hair down

Everybody pulled their socks up

Everybody put their foot down

Oh yeah

(M) (I've got a feeling)

(L) Everybody had a good year

(M) (A feeling deep inside)

(L) Everybody had a hard time

(M) (Oh yeah)

(L) Everybody had a wet dream

(M) (Oh yeah)

(L) Everybody saw the sunshine

(I've got a feeling)

Everybody had a good year

(A feeling I can't hide)

Everybody let their hair down

(Oh no)

Everybody pulled their socks up

(Oh no no)

Everybody put their foot down, oh yeah

Harrison contributes a sweet and laid-back love song on “For You Blue” with John Lennon playing a funky lap-held slide guitar.

I've loved you from the moment I saw you

You looked at me that's all you had to do

I feel it now I hope you feel it too

Because you're sweet and lovely girl I love you

Because you're sweet and lovely girl it's true

I love you more than ever girl I do

“The One After 909” is a rock and roll song from 1960 or earlier. It gets a great treatment on Let It Be that gets under your skin as it tells the story of a boy chasing a girl who missed the 9:09 train but caught the next one. It’s a raucous number with Harrison’s lead guitar and what sounds like rhythm guitar backed by a jumpy, energetic electric piano.

My baby says she's traveling on the one after 909

I said move over honey I'm traveling on that line

I said move over once, move over twice

Come on baby, don't be cold as ice

Said she's traveling on the one after 909

I begged her not to go and I begged her on my bended knees

You’re only foolin round, only foolin round with me

I said move over once, move over twice

Come on baby, don't be cold as ice

She said she's traveling on the one after 909

Picked up my bag, run to the station

Railman says you got the wrong location

Picked up the bag, run right home

Then I find I got the number wrong

Both “One After 909” and “Get Back” are great, high energy rock and roll like Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Bo Diddley tunes.

In contrast, “Let It Be” is an unhurried ballad with a churchy organ backing by Billy Preston and a soulful guitar solo and fills by Harrison. To me “Let It Be” is the best thing McCartney ever recorded, maybe my favorite Beatles song ever. The lyrics express the timeless wisdom of how to be at peace with oneself and the life one has. Change what you can for the better, but don’t beat your head against the wall hanging on to regrets and frustrations about things that are out of your control, the surest route to an unhappy life. But it isn’t just advice and philosophizing. It’s a powerful emotional expression from his heart. I assumed he must be harking back to a Catholic upbringing with “Mother Mary comes to me,” but he once said in an interview the reference was instead to his mother.

In the movie Let It Be he sings both “Let It Be” and “Long and Winding Road” in a full screen shot of his face with such sincerity and genuineness that I think they’re the closest expressions of his emotional core in all his music, far more than even “Yesterday.” They’re the best things on the album, notwithstanding the great rock and roll of “Get Back” and “The One after 909.”

Lennon was the utopian moralist and idealist philosopher with a trippy imagination. (“Imagine all the people/Living life in peace/You may say I'm a dreamer/But I'm not the only one,” and “Last night the wife said/Oh, boy, when you’re dead/You can’t take nothin with you but your soul”) McCartney was like a kid in a Montessori School on play day, with free rein to make whatever he felt like, creating narrative songs telling stories with characters from his fertile imagination like little novellettes: “Eleanor Rigby,” “Penny Lane,” “She Came in through the Bathroom Window,” “Rocky Racoon,” and “Get Back.”

Brett Nelson

Joan Baez – The Kingdom of Childhood Passes

I’ve been writing these articles about the musicians I loved in my formative years not only for those who were formed by the same music but for those younger people who might learn to appreciate their own music choices on a deeper, more satisfying, and meaningful level. That’s how I learned. Anyone who gets this kind of deep appreciation from any form of art feels their life and soul enriched by it. I don’t know if my articles can foster such enrichment, but that’s my ultimate hope, beyond just increasing awareness and appreciation of the musicians I write about. One of the most effective antidepressants is a sense of participation in something larger than oneself. I learned how to live perhaps more from listening to the wisdom and feelings expressed in music I listened to and novels I read than any other source of education.

I first encountered Joan Baez’s music in high school when I bought her first album, the 1960 self-titled Joan Baez, which I wasn’t enthralled with because her voice sounded kind of shrill to me, and the song selection didn’t appeal to me as I remember. Seven or eight years later a friend played me Any Day Now, her double LP of Bob Dylan songs, recorded in Nashville with top country music session players, many of whose names I’d run across before, some of whom played on the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band’s Will the Circle Be Unbroken album. What I heard on Any Day Now was smooth, relaxed, and unhurried, singing a wonderful selection of eighteen Dylan tunes with a depth of feeling and musical accompaniment that often matched and sometimes bettered Dylan’s recordings, including an 11-minute cover of “Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands.” Many years later Dylan said in an interview that she sang his songs better than anyone. I quickly bought the album and fell in love with it.

Any Day Now hops around with songs from different stages of Dylan’s career, starting with “Love Minus Zero/No Limit,” then reaching back for “North Country Blues,” which Baez sings with a voice full of foreboding that chronicles the progressive dying of a town dependent on one industry through the story of a young woman married to a miner.

The iron ore poured

As the years passed the door

The drag lines an' the shovels they was a-hummin’

Till one day my brother

Failed to come home

The same as my father before him . . .

Oh the years passed again

And the givin' was good

With the lunch bucket filled every season

What with three babies born

The work was cut down

To a half a day's shift with no reason

Then the shaft was soon shut

And more work was cut

And the fire in the air, it felt frozen

Till a man come to speak

And he said in one week

That number eleven was closin'

They complained, in the east

They are paying too high

They say that your ore ain't worth diggin’

That it's much cheaper down

In the South American towns

Where the miners work almost for nothin’

So the mining gates locked

And the red iron rotted

And the room smelled heavy from drinkin’

And the sad, silent song

Made the hour twice as long

As I waited for the sun to go sinking

I lived by the window

As he talked to himself

This silence of tongues it was building

Then one morning's wake

The bed it was bare

And I was left alone with three children . . .

You can feel the downward slide of hope and spirit in Baez’s voice and in a loosely-strung electric guitar that mirrors the moods of the song. It’s not an uplifting song but it’s compelling to listen to, and it makes you feel how people must have felt in Hibbing, MN where Dylan lived his early years. Whether Dylan imagined it in 1963 or not, he was prophetic about what happened to American manufacturing over the next 50 years that led to the election of a president who voiced the grievances of those left behind when their jobs moved overseas.

The infectiously cheery “You Ain’t Goin Nowhere” changes the mood, an irresistible song with intriguing lyrics and understated acoustic guitar and piano with a nice violin fill. I love the couplet that ends the chorus: “Oh, oh, are we gonna fly/Down in the easy chair!”

Buy me a flute

And a gun that shoots

Tailgates and substitutes

Strap yourself

To the tree with roots

You ain't goin' nowhere

Whoo-ee! Ride me high

Tomorrow's the day

My bride's gonna come

Oh, oh, are we gonna fly

Down in the easy chair!

Genghis Khan

He could not keep

All his kings

Supplied with sleep

We'll climb that hill no matter how steep

When we get up to it

Whoo-ee! Ride me high

Tomorrow's the day

My bride's gonna come

Oh, oh, are we gonna fly

Down in the easy chair!

Almost all the superb musical accompaniment is understated and supportive rather than prominent. It’s all background for Baez’s voice and Dylan’s songs. They’re Nashville musicians, but “You Ain’t Goin Nowhere” is about as close as it gets to country music.

She sings a slow and soulful rendition of “I Pity the Poor Immigrant,” with a somewhat more prominent accompaniment with piano and a soulful dobro. It’s unclear who Dylan was thinking of in the song, but most immigrants come here poor and go through the last hired, first fired cycle. Any poor ethnic group developed a small subset who found an economic opportunity in crime – there were Irish gangs, Jewish gangs, Puerto Rican gangs, Mexican gangs, black gangs, and more. The song suggests a Mafia kingpin, but it’s ethnically anonymous. He “falls in love with wealth itself,” “uses all his power to do evil,” and “builds his town with blood.”

I pity the poor immigrant

Whose strength is spent in vain,

Whose heaven is like Ironsides,

Whose tears are like rain,

Who eats but is not satisfied,

Who hears but does not see,

Who falls in love with wealth itself

And turns his back on me.

I pity the poor immigrant

Who tramples through the mud,

Who fills his mouth with laughing

And who builds his town with blood,

Whose visions in the final end

Must shatter like the glass.

I pity the poor immigrant

When his gladness comes to pass.

Next comes a tour de force a cappella version of “Tears of Rage.” She’s known for doing songs like “Amazing Grace” a cappella, but this is a song with free-form poetry and little structure or rhythm, and she does it remarkably well without losing a sense of timing in the song, even with no accompaniment to establish a rhythm. It’s an enigmatic lyric apparently describing the strained relationship between a daughter and father, powerfully sung.

We carried you in our arms

On Independence Day

And now you'd throw us all aside

And put us on our way

Oh, what dear daughter 'neath the sun

Would treat a father so

To wait upon him hand and foot

And always tell him "No?"

Tears of rage, tears of grief

Why must I always be the thief?

Come to me now, you know

We're so alone

And life is brief

We pointed out the way to go

And scratched your name in sand

Though you just thought that it was nothing more

Than a place for you to stand . . .

It was all very painless

When you went out to receive

All that false instruction

Which we never could believe

And now the heart is filled with gold

As if it was a purse

But oh, what kind of love is this

Which goes from bad to worse?

It's followed by the achingly gorgeous eleven-minute “Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands,” which Dylan said in “Sara” on his Desire album was written for his wife. It’s a beautifully poetic, almost melancholic song, maybe the best love song I’ve ever heard. It’s accompanied by a slow, almost hymnlike organ. “Sad-Eyed Lady” is an ode to a woman he has deep appreciation and respect for who he clearly has on a pedestal, but not because he has an idealized image of her. To the contrary, he sees her with clear eyes and appreciates her for who she is in all her facets like a priceless cut gemstone, unlike those who want something from her and can’t see her for who she is. He pays homage to her in very specific language, but in poetic metaphors which are almost surreal that only Dylan himself could likely know what they meant – “The kings of Tyrus with their convict list.” But “your deck of cards missing the jack and the ace” suggests she’s not impressed with hotshots and slick seducers. This is just a sample of eleven minutes worth of wonderful poetry.

Oh, the farmers and the businessmen, they all did decide

To show you the dead angels that they used to hide.

But why did they pick you to sympathize with their side?

Oh, how could they ever mistake you? . . .

With your sheets like metal and your belt like lace,

And your deck of cards missing the jack and the ace,

And your basement clothes and your hollow face,

Who among them can think he could outguess you?

With your silhouette when the sunlight dims

Into your eyes where the moonlight swims,

And your match-book songs and your gypsy hymns,

Who among them would try to impress you?

Sad-eyed lady of the lowlands,

Where the sad-eyed prophet says that no man comes,

My warehouse eyes, my Arabian drums,

Should I leave them by your gate,

Or, sad-eyed lady, should I wait?

The singer’s telling her he sees who she is in all her in all her complexity. He’s not sure he’s worthy of her, but he’s humbly asking if he should leave his gifts at her gate or wait for her to open it. I have no idea what “warehouse eyes” means.

Baez does justice to “I Dreamed I Saw St Augustine,” one of my favorite Dylan songs with a sadness and poignance that’s close to Dylan’s. It has a mournful piano break after the second verse that feels like a natural fit in the song and sets up the grief in the last verse: “I put my fingers against the glass/And bowed my head and cried.” She doesn’t quite reach the emptiness that Dylan expresses in the last line as his voice drops to barely get the last words out, but she draws out the last word to convey much of the same abject remorse and grief.

“One Too Many Mornings” starts with a gorgeous acoustic guitar accompaniment with a gentle bass, and gorgeous strings that add an anticipatory tension to the song. She draws out notes in a way that emphasizes the sadness of the end of a relationship. This is one song that surpasses Dylan’s recording. I can’t imagine anyone doing it with more tenderness.

It’s a restless hungry feeling

That don’t mean no one no good

When everything I’m a-sayin

You can say just as good

You’re right from your side

And I’m right from mine

We’re both just one too many mornings

And a thousand miles behind

In retrospect it must have seemed like it echoed the end of their relationship, although it was written earlier and likely about Suze Rotolo. Dylan’s breakup with Baez in 1965 was abrupt and heartbreaking for her, so it’s a testament to her resilience that she could come back in 1968 and record these songs with such feeling and respect for the songs.

Next comes “Boots of Spanish Leather.” I’ve heard several good versions, including Dylan’s. It’s accompanied by a great rhythm guitar with some steel guitar and dobro. It doesn’t have the poignance of Dylan’s version, where you can almost hear him realize after the next to last verse that his love is saying goodbye. But I love the feeling and rhythmic flow of Baez’s recording.

“Walkin” Down the Line” is a catchy version of a song Dylan never recorded to my knowledge,

with a brisk guitar-picking accompaniment. It sounds like a fifties folk song with a bit of rock and roll flavor, and it tends to run through my mind for hours or days after I’ve heard it.

My money comes and goes

And rolls and flows

Through the holes in the pockets in my clothes

I got my walkin shoes

And I ain’t a-gonna lose

I believe I got the walkin blues

I’m walkin down the line

And I’m walkin down the line

My feet’ll be a-flyin

To tell you bout my troubled mind

I love “My money comes and goes/And rolls and flows/Through the holes in the pockets of my clothes.” I’ve never heard or read assonance used better than that. Baez sings it like a river flowing with hardly a ripple over rocks beneath its surface. It’s pure pleasure to listen to.

Last is a wonderful rendition of “Restless Farewell,” not an easy song to sing with its long lines and complex rhythm. She does it with mostly her own accompaniment on rhythm guitar except on the choruses. It’s apparently an ode to Dylan’s friends in his early folk days in Minneapolis’s Dinkytown as he’s moving beyond that with a different vision of his future.

Oh all the money that in my whole life I did spend

Be it mine right or wrongfully

I let it slip gladly past the hands of my friends

To tie up the time most forcefully

But the bottles are done

We’ve killed each one

And the table’s full and overflowed

And the corner sign

Says it’s closing time

So I’ll bid farewell and be down the road . . .

Oh a false clock tries to tick out my time

To disgrace, distract and bother me

And the dirt of gossip blows into my face

And the dust of rumors covers me

But if the arrow is straight

And the point is slick

It can pierce through the dust no matter how thick

So I’ll make my stand

And remain as I am

And bid farewell and not give a damn

It’s an affectionate but bittersweet goodbye to a happy time and good friends by someone who knows he needs to move on to pursue a larger vision that he can only follow elsewhere. Baez sings it with a sense of loss but with assuredness that it’s time to move on.

Even with country music backing and occasional steel guitar or dobro fills, the album never sounds like a country music album, or a folk album for that matter. It sounds like an album driven by her vision and her taste that makes it a uniquely Joan Baez album, even though it’s all Dylan songs. The album is a testament to Baez’s love of Dylan’s music to want to pay tribute to it in this way, and her toughness that she could do it only a few years after their deeply painful breakup. She continued to honor Dylan’s songwriting, as we’ll see with subsequent albums.

In the 70s she came out with a string of albums on top of Any Day Now that belied her “Saint Joan” image and showed her to be a complex and vulnerable woman with a sense of humor and a down-to-earth likeable sensibility. After Any Day Now came the superb Diamonds and Rust, titled after the opening song. “Diamonds and Rust” is apparently about a call Dylan made to her out of the blue in 1974. It’s a beautiful and moody song recounting their relationship and Dylan’s apparent feeler to her about rekindling it. She’s recognizing there’s a price to pay for the offer, and she’s unwilling to pay it again.

Well, I’ll be damned, here comes your ghost again

But that’s not unusual, it’s just that the moon is full

And you happened to call

And here I sit, hand on the telephone

Hearing a voice I’d known a couple of light years ago

Heading straight for a fall

As I remember your eyes were bluer than robin’s eggs

My poetry was lousy, you said . . .

We both know what memories can bring

They bring diamonds and rust

Well you burst on the scene already a legend

The unwashed phenomenon, the original vagabond

You strayed into my arms

And there you stayed, temporarily lost at sea

The madonna was yours for free, yes the girl on the half shell

Could keep you unharmed . . .

Now you’re telling me you’re not nostalgic

Then give me another word for it –

You who’re so good with words

And at keeping things vague

Cause I need some of that vagueness now

It’s all come back too clearly

Yes I loved you dearly

And if you’re offering me diamonds and rust

I’ve already paid

Baez toured with Dylan and a host of others, including old folkies, in the Rolling Thunder Review in 1975, singing four duets with him dressed exactly like Dylan with the same vest, scarf, and hat, even to white face paint. She also played “The Woman in White” in Dylan’s film from the tour Renaldo and Clara, while Dylan’s wife Sara played Clara. There is a scene from the film where Dylan and Baez sit having a conversation like old friends when Dylan complains teasingly that “You went out and got married on me,” and she tells him “You went and got married first,” to which he tells her, after a pause like he’s trying to think of a dodge, “Yeah, but I married the woman I loved,” and Baez says “Yes, you did.” He tells her they should have gotten married, to which Baez replies without hesitation that it would never have worked. Wikipedia says they actually toured together again in 1984 with Carlos Santana.

The second song on the album is one of my favorite Jackson Browne songs, “Fountain of Sorrow.” Browne sings with a rhythm and a flow of language that’s as effortlessly fluid as a river, and Baez matches that here. She’s accompanied on a lively piano by someone named Joe Sample and by superb guitarists Dean Parks and Larry Carlton, whose names show up on a lot of the albums I listened to in the seventies, as well as the ubiquitous Jim Gordon on drums throughout the album, listed as Mucho Gordo on one song.

Looking through some photographs I found inside a drawer

I was taken by a photograph of you . . .

You were turning round to see who was behind you

And I took your childish laughter by surprise

And at the moment that my camera happened to find you

There was just a trace of sorrow in your eyes . . .

When you see through love’s illusions there lies the danger

And your perfect lover just looks like a perfect fool

So you go running off in search of a perfect stranger

While the loneliness seems to spring from your life

Like a fountain from a pool

Now for you and me, it may not be that hard to reach our dreams

But that magic feeling never seems to last

and while the future’s there for anyone to change

Still you know it seems it would be easier sometimes to change the past

I’m just one or two years and a couple of changes behind you

In my lessons at loves pain and heartache school

Where if you feel too free and you need something to remind you

There’s this loneliness springing up from your life

Like a fountain from a pool

Fountain of sorrow, fountain of light

You’ve known the hollow sound of your own steps in flight

You’ve had to hide sometimes, but now you’re all right

And it’s good to see your smiling face tonight . . .

You’ve had to struggle, you’ve had to fight

To keep understanding and compassion in sight

You could be laughing at me, you’ve got the right

But you go on smiling, so clear and so bright

And it’s good to see your smiling face tonight

I love the lines “I took your childish laughter by surprise” and “Still you know it seems/ it would be easier sometimes to change the past,” as well as the joy in “But you go on smiling, so clear and so clear and so bright/And it’s good to see your smiling face tonight.”

It’s followed by an excellent rendition of a song by Stevie Wonder and Syreeta Wright titled "I Never Dreamed You’d Leave in Summer” with Carlton and Parks on guitar and the combined acoustic and electric pianos that accompanies many of the songs on the album. It’s an example of the wide range of song styles on the album showcasing her versatility. “Children and All That Jazz” is a Baez-penned chronicle of trying to get her toddler ready for bed after an exciting day. It starts out at a high pitch and breakneck pace as she’s naming all the friends her son’s played with that day, dropping in pitch throughout and winding down the tempo at the end as she feels her fatigue, an experience I’m sure all parents are familiar with.

. . . Sweet Pearl and Nicholas

Come here and tickle us

I don’t like nicknames

I like to play games

One of them’s Batman

That’s where it’s at man

Look at your T-shirt

I see you’re all wet now

I’ll give you a bath if

You go to bed now . . .

Light of my life is

Younger than new leaves

Brighter than you please

Says that he loves me

Big as the world and

Gabriel Harris

You go to bed now

It’s quarter to nine, I’m tired,

I’m tired, I’m tired

One of your mice died

That was when you cried

Get in the tub and

Play with your boats now

Sit here beside me

I’ll tell you a story

One about snakes and

Anything gory

I’m falling asleep and

You’re smarter than I am

Light of my life, good night, good night,

good night

I never had kids, but the intense energy of small children and resistance to going to bed is palpable as I listen to this affectionate song, and I can feel her love and exhaustion, as well as what it’s like for a parent trying to get an energetic toddler ready for and into bed.

Next comes a cover of Dylan’s “Simple Twist of Fate,” one of my favorite songs from Blood on the Tracks. She turns Dylan’s meditative acoustic guitar treatment into a jumping rock and roll version at a faster tempo and with a lot of piano accompaniment by Larry Knechtel on acoustic piano and Joe Sample on electric piano and both Larry Carlton and Dean Parks adding guitar fills. It keeps the spirit of the song but is quite a contrast with Dylan’s take. She even sings one verse with a spot-on imitation of the sneer Dylan sometimes sang with, though he doesn’t sing “Twist of Fate” like that. It sounds like playful teasing rather than satiric. She sings the song in respectful homage, and there’s no doubt that she likes the song.

They sat together in the park

As the evening sky grew dark,

She looked at him and he felt a spark tingle to his bones.

'Twas then he felt alone and wished that he'd gone straight

And watched out for a simple twist of fate. . .

He woke up, the room was bare

He didn't see her anywhere.

He told himself he didn't care, pushed the window open wide,

Felt an emptiness inside to which he just could not relate

Brought on by a simple twist of fate.

He hears the ticking of the clocks

And walks along with a parrot that talks,

Hunts her down by the waterfront docks where the sailors all come in.

Maybe she'll pick him out again, how long must he wait

Once more for a simple twist of fate.

It’s a story of a one-night stand that left the man empty and longing for more connection after she’s already gone when he wakes up. It’s mysterious as “he felt a spark tingle to his bones” but at the same time “he felt alone and wished that he’d gone straight/And watched out for a simple twist of fate.” It speaks of the ambivalent push me-pull you of relationships in those who both want connection and fear being hurt, which perhaps mirrors something in the relationship Baez and Dylan had. In any case she liked the song enough to record it.

One of the best songs on the album is her tender cover of John Prine’s poignant “Hello in There” about an old couple whose children have moved to distant places and “left us alone.”

Me and Loretta we don’t talk much now

She sits and stares at the back door screen

All the news just repeats itself

Like some forgotten dream

That we’ve both seen

Someday I’ll go and call up Rudy

We worked together at the factory

What’ll I tell him if he asks “What’s new?”

Nothin’, what’s with you?

Nothin’ much to do

You know old trees just grow stronger

Old rivers grow wider every day

But old people they just grow lonesome

Waitin’ for someone to say

Hello in there

Hello

So if you’re walkin’ down the street sometime

And spot some hollow ancient eyes

Please don’t pass them by and stare

Like you don’t care

Say hello in there

Hello

Say hello in there

Hello

The last stanza with “hollow ancient eyes” and the plea to not “pass them by and stare/Like you don’t care” hits your heart with the song’s picture of how lonely old people without social connections can be. Baez’s pitch drops as each stanza nears its end, and you feel the compassion for people “Waitin’ for someone to say/Hello in there/Hello.”

She then segues into a self-penned tribute to Dylan’s return to live performing in 1974 titled “Winds of the Old Days.” It starts with her reading that “the prince had returned to the stage.”

Hovering near treacherous water

A friend saw her drifting and caught her

Unguarded fantasies flying too far

Memories tumbling like sweets from a jar . . .

Breath on an undying ember

It doesn't take much to remember

Those eloquent songs from the good old days

That set us to marching with banners ablaze

But reporters, there's no sense in prying

Our blue-eyed son's been denying

The truths that are wrapped in a mystery

The sixties are over, so set him free . . .

Why do I sit, the autumnal judge?

Years of self-righteousness will not budge

Singer or savior, it was his to choose

Which of us knows what was his to lose?

‘Cause idols are best when they're made of stone

A savior's a nuisance to live with at home

Stars often fall, heroes go unsung

And martyrs most certainly die too young

So thank you for writing the best songs

Thank you for righting a few wrongs

You're a savage gift on a wayward bus

But you stepped down and you sang to us

And get you down to the harbor now

Most of the sour grapes are gone from the bough

Ghosts of Johanna will visit you there

And the winds of the old days will blow through your hair

It’s a vulnerable and honest song, a blessing to the lover she felt so deeply hurt by in 1965, cheering Dylan on for performing live again. “Memories tumbling like sweets from a jar,” “Why do I sit, the autumnal judge/Years of self-righteousness will not budge/Singer or savior, it was his to choose/Which of us knows what was his to lose?”, and “You’re a savage gift on a wayward bus,” and are fine poetry (but there’s no sense of self-righteousness with its stance of moral superiority here – “years of self-righteousness” seem to have already budged). I always took the last line as a compliment, not an indictment, as in wild gift on a bus repeatedly taking off in unexpected and original creative directions. “The sixties are over, so set him free” and “Which of us knows what was his to lose?” make it a humble, generous, forward-looking song.

I don’t know what she thought of Highway 61 Revisited, but she recorded “Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands” and “Love Minus Zero/No Limit” from Blonde on Blonde for Any Day Now, plus songs from John Wesley Harding. And she references “Visions of Johanna” in “Winds of the Old Days,” so she still followed his music, clearly cheering him on here. Taken with “Diamonds and Rust” “Winds of the Old Days” is a testament that if her poetry was lousy in the sixties, it wasn’t in the seventies, emphatically demonstrated here and on her followup album Gulf Winds.

“Winds of the Old Days” is followed by Janis Ian’s deeply longing and sad lament “Jesse” with a melancholy piano and a yearning, synthesized horn solo by Baez at the end.

Jesse, come home, there’s a hole in the bed

Where we slept, now it’s growing cold

By the hearth, all apart, it hangs on my heart

And I’m leaving the light on the stairs

No I’m not scared – I wait for you

Hey Jesse, it’s lonely, come home

You can feel the longing in Baez’s voice throughout the song, but especially when she sings the last line – the same in each verse, as she pauses and holds off with each two words on the last, making you feel the raw, honest emotion devoid of self-pity, letting him know how she misses him, with little confidence her hope will be answered. It’s a supremely poignant song.

She lightens up with “Dida,” a marvelous duet with Joni Mitchell whose lyrics consist of a single word, “Dida.” It’s an exhilarating tune with Mitchell weaving her voice around Baez’s lead singing that results in a smooth meld of two wonderful voices in which each sings their own improvised melody. It’s a virtuoso performance.

It’s followed by a medley of eight lines from Stephen Foster’s “I Dream of Jeannie with the Light Brown Hair” combined with three verses from “Danny Boy.” I can’t imagine anyone singing “I Dream of Jeannie” or “Danny Boy” with more depth of feeling than in this recording, but I later heard Papa John Creach’s instrumental recording of “Danny Boy” on the violin that may surpass even Baez. When she ends with “Oh Danny boy, Oh Danny boy, I love you so,” there’s no doubt about how deep the love of the woman in the song is. It’s powerful singing.

Baez issued a double live album in 1976 titled From Every Stage (referring to the stages of her career) with five Dylan songs including a wonderful performance of “Lily, Rosemary, and the Jack of Hearts” that at least equals Dylan’s (“I just love this song,” she says in introducing it), Emmylou Harris’s “Boulder to Birmingham\,” Leonard Cohen’s “Suzanne,” “Diamonds and Rust,” and a better version of “I Shall Be Released” than the one on Any Day Now.

Then came Gulf Winds, an album entirely of songs written by Baez, fully confident of her own writing ability and justifying her confidence. It starts with “Sweeter for Me,” a love song to someone who can’t be with her, with whom she “cannot be/What you want me to be when you are next to me.” Each verse ends with “You suffered sweeter for me than anyone I’ve ever known.” How he suffered for her isn’t said, but it sounds like a personal song from Baez’s life.

Next comes the lively and giddy “Seabirds” about writing while she’s sitting in a bar looking out on the ocean, with ocean and seagull sound effects. It has some sort of Latin/reggae beat with acoustic guitar, light organ, and hand drums with a jazzy feel.

Don't worry about my politics they are what they are

I work best when I get some rest right now I'm in a bar

Overlooking the whole wide world it's over the Pacific

I've never written when I was drunk this could be terrific!

And the seabird struggles in the wind, she topples, balances again

The lady sitting next to me is gazing in the eyes

Of the stranger sitting next to her who’s mouthing truths and lies

He's actually quite nice, I guess, he has an honest look

He doesn't know I've lost my mind scribbling in this book

And the seabird struggles in the wind, she topples, balances again . . .

Four big pelicans just flew by, the room got very still

One of them carried the breath of God tucked way back in his bill

I know it was the breath of God, it's the same as the secret of life

He's carrying it off to the Shah of Iran to trade it for the end of strife

And the seabird struggles in the wind, she topples, balances again

The chorus with the seabird toppling in the wind slows down, sung with a tentative uncertainty as it struggles for balance. “Seabirds” is just a fun song to listen to and one of my favorites on the album, as is the next song, the celebratory “Caruso.”

Miracles bowl me over and often will they do so

Now I think I was asleep till I heard the voice of the great Caruso . . .

A friend of mine gave me a tape

She'd copied from a record disc

It was made at the turn of the century

And found in a jacket labeled "misc"

And to cellos, harps, and flugelhorns

With the precision of a hummingbird's heart

Was the Lord of the monarch butterflies,

One time a ruler of the world of art

Bring infinity home let me embrace it one more time

Make it the lilies of the field or Caruso in his prime

Yeah, the king of them all was Enrico, whose singular chest could rival

A hundred fervent Baptists giving forth in a tent revival

It's true he was a vocal miracle, but that's only secondary

It's the soul of the monarch butterfly that I find a little bit scary . . .

There are oh so many miracles that the Western sky exposes

Why go looking for lilacs when you’re lying in a bed of roses

It’s a brisk song with a driving rhythm, accompanied by a mellow but fast electric guitar by Dean Parks, organ with a light touch, and complex percussion by Jim Gordon. I love the chorus: “Bring infinity home let me embrace it one more time/Make it the lilies of the field or Caruso in his prime,” and especially the line “It's the soul of the monarch butterfly that I find a little bit scary.” It’s a great song.

“Kingdom of Childhood” is an engaging eight-minute reflection on the uncertainty and insecurity of life.

The ship that sails the seven seas

Has finally brought me to me knees

It’s not much to my liking

. . . the tide comes in, death rides it like a viking

Happiness is temporary, believe me I know

It can arrive as a shining crystal and leave as the melting snow

Come all you lads and lasses, the Kingdom of Childhood passes

Oh but I’m hardy in these years

Or I’d have sunk down in my tears to the earth beneath my feet

I want to endure the slings and arrows

That Hamlet spoke about, but harrowed,

he was forced to a ragged defeat

There was a method to his madness

But overcome by pride and sadness, he did not endure

Surely his death was a grave mistake

How many deaths do we really calculate, isn’t that true, Lord? . . .

If it was misfortune who woke you up

To pour you the dregs from her broken cup, cast her aside

The sunrise will appear with the mockingbird

Who stays deep in the canyon and is heard glorious in his song

He cannot be wrong

Happiness is temporary, believe me I know

It can arrive as a shining crystal and leave as the melting snow

Come all you lads and lasses, the Kingdom of Childhood passes

The song is a meditation on the loss of those nirvanic childhood years when we played all day and our imaginations were free to create worlds and dream of heroic actions, a creativity that most of us lost in the educational system and the necessary conformity required in becoming an employee and earning a living. It’s also about the loss of innocence in learning about the realities of the adult world that contains losses, defeats and sometimes even tragedies.

“O Brother” is a searing response to Dylan’s song “Oh Sister” from his Desire album, where he seems to threaten a woman with God’s disapproval if she doesn’t treat him the way he thinks she should (“Our Father would not like the way that you act/And you should realize the danger.” Danger? Really? She takes him eloquently to task for laying a guilt trip on the woman, either Dylan’s wife Sara or Baez, and for cruelty to friends in the past.

You've got eyes like Jesus but you speak with a viper's tongue

We were just sitting around on earth, where the hell did you come from?

With your lady dressed in deerskin and an amazing way about her

When are you going to realize that you just can't live without her?

Take it easy, take it light, but take it

Your lady gets her power from the goddess and the stars

You get yours from the trees and the brooks and a little from life on Mars

And I've known you for a good long while and would you kindly tell me, mister

How in the name of the Father and the Son did I come to be your sister?

Take it easy, take it light, but take it

You've done dirt to lifelong friends with little or no excuses

Who endowed you with the crown to hand out these abuses?

Your lady knows about these things but they don't put her under

Me, I know about them too, and I react like thunder

Take it easy, take it light, but take it

So little brother when you come to knock on my door

I don't want to bring you down but I just went through the floor

My love for you extends through life and I don't want to waste it

But honey, what you've been dishing out you'd never want to taste it . . .

Take it . . . Easy, take it light. But take it.

It seems she’s writing as if “Oh Sister” were about his wife Sara and admonishing him to realize what a gift to him she is, but then she asks “how in the name of the Father and the Son did I come to be your sister?” She holds nothing back from memories over the years of Dylan’s well-chronicled harshness to others and says “I react like thunder,” without referencing her own wounds. But also says “My love for you extends through life” and gently admonishes him to “Take it easy, take it light.” It’s a fast-paced song with her acoustic rhythm guitar changing intensity and pace while it dominates and drives the song, backed by electric guitar and organ.

She follows “O Brother” with a reflection on the awareness that for Dylan and her “Our Time Is Passing Us By,” a leisurely song with her simple guitar picking and piano backing her.

Well it was fun for the first few years, playing “legends in our time”

And there were those who discussed the fact that we drifted apart in our prime

And we haven't got too much in common except that we're so much alike

And I hate it, for though you're a big part of me, but our time is passing us by

So I can sit here in my silver chair, you can stay there on your gold

You can say you've got commitments and I can say I'm growing old

And I can get up and make comments on the colors of the evening sky

But our ships have come home and the night's rolling in

And our time is passing us by

But cast us adrift and cross a few stars and I'm good for one more try

I love the line “we haven’t got too much in common except that we’re so much alike.” It's not clear if she’s talking about their time in the music scene passing them by or if she’s saying the window for them resuming their relationship is passing when she says “I’m good for one more try,” which sounds like the latter. Gulf Winds apparently comes after her stint in Dylan’s Rolling Thunder Revue. She wrote a number of songs that frankly expressed her wide-ranging thoughts and feelings about her relationship to Dylan, and both she and Dylan seemed to have ambivalence and conflicted feelings about each other. After Gulf Winds she seems to have left that behind, although they did tour together with Carlos Santana in 1984.

The highlight of Gulf Winds is the title song that ends the album. It’s an ode to her family and her early years growing up, on through her early 30s. Her most personal song, it’s fast-paced ten-and-a-half minutes accompanied only by her deft and swift picking on acoustic guitar.

There's high winds on the pier tonight, my soul departs from me

Striding like Thalia's Ghost south on the murky sea

And into midnight's tapestry she fades, ragged and wild

Searching down her ancestry in the costume of a Persian child

Gulf Winds bring me flying fish, that shine in the crescent moon

Show me the horizon where the dawn will break anew

And cool me here on this lonely pier, where the heron are flying low

Echo the songs my father knew in the towns of Mexico

When I was young my eyes were wise, my father was good to me

Instead of having a flock of sons he had two other girls and me . . .

It's hard to be a princess in the States when your skin is brown

And Mama smoothed my worried brow, as I leaned on the kitchen door

"Why do you carry the weight", she said "of the world and maybe more" . . .

My grandfathers were ministers and it came on down the line

My Father preached in his parents' church when he was ten years and nine

And Mama dressed in parishioners' clothes and didn't believe in Hell

Her daddy fought the DAR, if he'd lived, I'd have known him well . . .

My father turned down many a job just to give us something real

It's hard to be a scientist in the States when you've got ideals

And Mama kept the budget book, and she kept the garden too

Bought fish from the man on Thursdays, fed all of us and strangers too . . .

Now Father's going to India, sometime in the fall

They tried to stay together but you just can't do it all

I'll think about him if he goes, there's a little gray in his hair

Though not much 'cause he's Mexican, they don't age, they just prepare

And if he goes to India, I'll miss him most of all

He'll see me in the mudlark’s face, hear me in the beggar's call

And Mama will stay home, I guess, and worry if she did wrong

And I'll say a prayer for both of them and sing them both my song

Gulf Winds bring me flying fish, that shine in the crescent moon

Show me the horizon where the dawn will break anew

And cool me here on this lonely pier, where the heron are flying low

Echo the songs my father knew in the towns of Mexico

I love the line “he’s Mexican, they don’t age, they just prepare.” The song’s a family chronicle and a tribute to her parents, particularly her father, who was born in Puebla, Mexico, grew up in Brooklyn, and earned a PhD in physics from Stanford. Baez’s mother was the daughter of an Anglican priest in Edinburgh. The family converted to Quakerism when Baez was young. She seems to have identified with her father – “It’s hard to be a princess in the States when your skin is brown;” “It’s hard to be a scientist in the States when you’ve got ideals.” Baez and her mother were both arrested in 1967 along with 70 other women for blocking the Armed Forces Induction Center in Oakland, CA, and she spent a month in jail.

In my mind it’s pretty much a tossup between Gulf Winds and Diamonds and Rust as to which is her best album, but I lean toward Gulf Winds as more personal overall and a greater poetic accomplishment due to having written all the songs herself. All the songs are good, and “Seabirds,” “Caruso,” and “Gulf Winds” are terrific. It’s been said that politics is disastrous to art, and I’m not moved by songs like “Joe Hill” and “Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Around” on her live From Every Stage album, regardless of how much the latter meant to the civil rights movement. But these three priceless albums cement her stature as a sensitive, perceptive, and compassionate singer and songwriter.

Brett Nelson

The Band Carries the Weight

In 1970 a Time magazine cover featured the five members of a rock band simply called The Band, only the second time a Time cover had a rock band on it, the first being The Beatles. I was a big Dylan fan, and the article talked about them backing Dylan on a 1965-66 tour. That may have been the first I heard of them. I think I went out and bought their first album, 1968’s Music from Big Pink, soon after reading that. What I got was something unlike The Beatles or the Rolling Stones or the Beach Boys or anything else I’d ever heard, including Dylan. In spite of the unusual mix of sounds on many numbers, it’s been my favorite album by The Band ever since I got it. Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters said it was the “second-most influential record in the history of rock and roll" and journalist Al Aronowitz called it "country soul . . . a sound never heard before." They seemed to be conjuring up some version of music ladled with flavors from 19th century rural America, with a sound that was a slightly cacophonous rock-folk-country stew that was fresh and fun to listen to. There was no one who sounded like they did.

I just now listened to that first album again all the way through, and I still don’t know how to describe what it sounds like. It’s an unusual mix of guitar, organ, and piano with a heavy, slow drumbeat that, sounding like a bunch of hometown musicians getting together to play whatever instruments they had and sing, but it somehow comes together in songs of beauty with mysterious lyrics evoking the 19th century. It begins with Richard Manuel singing Dylan’s “Tears of Rage” in a strained falsetto, a slow and lugubrious lament about how a daughter treats her father to “wait upon him hand and foot yet always tell him ‘No’.”

We pointed you the way to go

And scratched your name in sand

Though you just thought it was nothing more

Than a place for you to stand

I want you to know that while we watched

You discover no one would be true

That I myself was one who thought

It was just a childish thing to do

Tears of rage, tears of grief

Why must I always be the thief?

Come to me now, you know we're so alone

And life is brief

“The Weight” is The Band’s quintessential song, covered by many others including the Staples Singers and Aretha Franklin, Jackie DeShannon, a band called The Smiths, and the Grateful Dead. It’s probably my favorite song by The Band. Garth Hudson and Richard Manuel switch instruments, with Manuel playing organ and Hudson playing a wonderful wandering piano accompaniment that weaves in and out of the rhythm but always syncs back in perfectly at the end of each verse. The song describes a visitor to a town called Nazareth who pulls in “half past dead.” Robertson related it to Nazareth, PA where his Martin acoustic guitar was made, but the name and being told there’s no place he can lay his head has Biblical connotations.

I pulled into Nazareth, was feelin' about half past dead

I just need some place where I can lay my head

"Hey, mister, can you tell me where a man might find a bed?"

He just grinned and shook my hand, "no" was all he said

Take a load off Fanny

Take a load for free

Take a load off Fanny

And (and) (and) you put the load

(You put the load) right on (right on me)

I picked up my bag, I went lookin' for a place to hide

When I saw old Carmen and the Devil walkin side by side

I said, "Hey, Carmen, come on let's go downtown"

She said, "I gotta go but my friend can stick around"

He's not getting much of a welcome, and everyone he meets asks him for a favor or leaves him with the Devil, so in the last verse

Get your Cannonball now to take me down the line

My bag is sinkin low and I do believe it's time

To get back to Miss Fanny, you know she's the only one

Who sent me here with her regards for everyone

Take a load off Fanny

Take a load for free

Take a load off Fanny

And (and) (and) you put the load

(You put the load) right on (right on me)

Another song I love is “We Can Talk,” written by Manuel about the reticence between a man and a woman to talk about their relationship, but it may also relate to things the “silent majority” kept under the table that the counterculture of the 60s wanted to bring out in the open. I laugh internally every time I hear the last two lines.

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 . . .

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 swear if you ever got a pat on the back

It would likely burst your lungs

“Chest Fever” has a demonic virtuoso organ intro with another organ break before the last verse. It’s a testament to Hudson’s classical music chops. The story is that Hudson had a classical music career in sight, and his parents only agreed to let him join the band if the other members agreed to pay him $10/week for music lessons and buy him a state-of-the-art Lowery organ. I love the line “I feel the freeze down in my knees.” The song has an ominous mood.

They say she's a chooser, but I just can't refuse her.

She was just there, but then she can't be here no more.

And as my mind unweaves, I feel the freeze down on my knees.

But just before she leaves, she receives.

“Lonesome Suzie” is another song written by Manuel describing a young woman in a lot of pain, with the singer wondering if he should reach out to her but seeming reluctant to get involved, sung by Manuel in falsetto as if he’s feeling her hurt. It’s a very touching song.

Lonesome Suzie never got the breaks

She's always losing and so she sits and cries and shakes

It's hard just to watch her and if I touch her

Oh, poor Suzie, I'm wonderin what to do . . .

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 my 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?

The mood changes dramatically with Dylan and Danko’s “This Wheel’s on Fire,” a rocker that warns the singer is coming after someone. It’s not clear what the wheel refers to except that it’s explosive and perhaps self-destructive as well. The song has been covered by people from Ian and Sylvia to Elvis Costello to the Byrds, who tacked on the recording of a muiffled explosion at the end as sound effects.

If your memory serves you well

You'll remember you're the one

That called on them to call on me

To get you your favors done

And after every plan had failed

And there was nothing more to tell

You know that we shall meet again

If your memory serves you well

This wheel's on fire

Rolling down the road

Just notify my next of kin

This wheel shall explode!

The album ends with Manuel singing a slow, soulful falsetto version of “I Shall Be Released” with his own piano accompaniment. It’s an expression of hope and faith by a man in some kind of prison, contrasted with another man who “swears he’s not to blame” and cries out all day long that he was framed.

They say every man needs protection

They say that every man must fall

Yet I swear I see my reflection

Somewhere so high above this wall

I see my light come shinin

From the west down to the east

Any day now, any day now

I shall be released

I bought their second album shortly after the first. Titled simply The Band, its brown cover showed a black-and-white photo of the five musicians, with a staged photo of them with their instruments on the back cover as they might have looked around 1900. This was quite a contrast from Big Pink, whose cover was a painting by Dylan and back cover showed a view of the pink house, and which opened to a large photograph of them standing outdoors with a large group of their “next of kin.”

The album opens with the bouncy “Across the Great Divide,” conjuring up a vision of pioneers making the western wagon trek across the continent in the 19th century. It’s accompanied by horns and an understated organ in a cheery mood, in spite of Molly holding a gun.

Standin' by your window in pain

Pistol in your hand

And I beg you, dear Molly, girl,

Try and understand your man the best you can

Across the Great Divide

Just grab your hat, and take that ride

Get yourself a bride

And bring your children down to the river side

I had a goal in my younger days

I nearly wrote my will

But I changed my mind for the better

And I still had my fill and I'm fit to kill . . .

Now Molly dear, don't ya shed a tear

Your time will surely come

You'll feed your man chicken every Sunday

Now tell me, hon, whatchya done with the gun?

The third song is “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down,” the other song most frequently associated with The Band besides “The Weight.” I once read that Canadian Robbie Robertsoin said he wrote the song for Arkansas native Levon Helm to “get it all out of his system.” It doesn’t glorify the Confederacy but expresses the deprivation and loss that southern poor whites experienced in the last year of the Civil War. Helm sings it with passion and sorrow.

Now, I don't mind chopping wood

And I don't care if the money's no good

You take what you need

And you leave the rest

But they should never

Have taken the very best

The night they drove old Dixie down

And the bells were ringing

The night they drove old Dixie down

And all the people were singing

They went, "Na, na-na-na-na-na, na-na-na-na, na na-na-na-na"

“When You Awake” expresses a lighthearted attitude with an optimistic outlook, sung in Rick Danko’s tenor voice. It’s also a favorite of mine.

Ollie told me, I'm a fool

So I walked on down the road a mile

Went to the house that brings a smile

Sat upon my grandpa's knee

And what do you think he said to me?

When you awake, you will remember everything

You will be hangin on a string

When you believe you will relieve on the soul

That you were born up to grow old and never know . . .

I ain't gonna worry all day long

Snow's gonna come and the frost gonna bite

My old car froze up last night

Ain't no reason to hang my head

I could wake up in the mornin dead

“Rockin Chair” is about an old 19th century seaman who’s had his fill of the sailing and is trying to convince his best friend to quit going to sea with him. It’s sung by Manuel in his baritone with I think Danko joining on the chorus. It’s accompanied by acoustic guitar and Hudson’s accordion with no drums that I can hear, in a leisurely ballad that’s a pleasure to listen to.

Hang around, Willie boy,

Don't you raise the sails anymore

It's for sure, I've spent my whole life at sea

And I'm pushin age seventy-three

Now there's only one place that was meant for me . . .

Oh, to be home again,

Down in old Virginny,

With my very best friend,

They call him Ragtime Willie

Would'a been nice just to see the folks,

Listen once again to the stale jokes,

That big rockin' chair won't go nowhere

“Jawbone” is a humorous song with a jumpy rhythm about a thief who loves what he does and can’t resist going back for more in spite of the consequences.

Oh, Jawbone, when did you first go wrong?

Oh, Jawbone, where is it you belong?

Three time loser, you'll never learn

Lay down your tools before you burn

You keep on runnin and hidin your face

Spreadin your heat all over the place

I'm a thief and I dig it

Up on a reef, I'm gonna rig it

I'm a thief and I dig it

Oh, Jawbone, why don't you sit and moan?

Oh, Jawbone, you know that it's stone for stone

Sneak through the night upon your toes

To look in your eye, it never shows

Your name upon the post office wall

Put you on edge cause they wrote it too small . . .

Temptation stands just behind that door

So what you wanna go and open it for?

“Unfaithful Servant” is my favorite song on the album, a slow ballad about the end of a relationship sung beautifully in Danko's pure tenor. It’s accompanied by Robertson’s acoustic guitar with a trilling solo characteristic of his playing, Manuel on piano, and Hudson playing a beautiful soprano saxophone to finish the song. The lyrics are ambiguous, wondering what the man did that made the woman “send you away,” but saying “it’s no one’s fault” and “bear in mind who’s to blame in all the shame.”

Unfaithful servant

I hear you leavin soon in the mornin

What did you do to the lady

That she's gonna have to send you away?

Unfaithful servant

You don't have to say you're sorry

If you done it just for the spite

Or did you do it just for the glory?

Like a stranger you turned your back

Left your keys and gone to pack

Bear in mind who's to blame in all the shame

She really cared, the time she spared and the home you shared . . .

Life has been good to us all even when that sky is rainin

To take it like a grain of salt is all I can do, it's no one's fault

Makes no difference if we fade away

It's just as it was, it's much too cold for me to stay . . .

Oh, lonesome servant can't you see

We're still one and the same, just you and me

Their next release, Stage Fright, is a lesser album, I think, but it has some real gems on it. The standout cut is the title song ”Stage Fright,” which became a staple of their live performances, as recorded on Rock of Ages, Before the Flood, and The Last Waltz. Robertson says in the liner notes to the CD that it had to do with feeling more vulnerable as he wrote more personal-confessional lyrics, something he had avoided on the first two albums. Danko sings it with a slightly frantic nervousness that sounds like someone with stage fright, accompanied by piano, organ and drums, with some electric guitar and fiddle by Danko.

Now deep in the heart of a lonely kid

Sufferin so much for what he did

They gave this ploughboy his fortune and fame

Since that day he ain't been the same

See the man with the stage fright

Just standin up there to give it all his might

He got caught with the spotlight

But when we get to the end

He wants to start all over again . . .

The doctor said . . . "You can make it in your disguise

Just never show the fear that's in your eyes"

Now when he says that he's afraid

Take him at his word

And for the price that the poor boy has paid

He gets to sing just like a bird, ooh ooh ooh

I love “Daniel and the Sacred Harp,” a classic story of someone selling his soul to the devil, but he doesn't realize it because he grabs the harp and runs off without staying to listen to what else he has to pay for it besides the money. It’s backed by a churchy organ and has the feel of an Old Testament story drawn from the Jewish side of Robertson’s heritage.

Tell me Daniel how the harp came into your possession

Are you one of the chosen few who will march in the big procession?

And Daniel said

The sacred harp was handed down, from father unto son

And me not being related, I could never be the one

So I saved up all my silver, and took it to a man

Who said he could deliver the harp straight into my hand

Three years I waited patiently

Till he returned with the harp from the sea of Galilee

He said there is one more thing I must ask

But not of personal greed

But I wouldn't listen I just grabbed the harp

And said take what you may need

Now Daniel looked quite satisfied, and the harp it seemed to glow

But the price that Daniel had really paid, he did not even know . . .

So to his father Daniel did run

And he said oh father what have I done

His father said son you've given in, you won your harp

But you’re lost in sin.

Then Daniel took the harp and went high on the hill

And he blew across the meadow like a whippoorwill

He played out his heart just the time to pass

But as he looked to the ground, he noticed no shadow did he cast

There are some other good songs on the album, but my co-favorite with “Daniel and the Sacred Harp” is “All La Glory,” inspired by the recent birth of Robertson’s first child, a daughter, and sung with great tenderness by Helm. It’s a lullaby with acoustic guitar, a beautiful and gentle organ by Hudson, and a nice subdued bass by Danko.

I wanna hear the pitter patter

Climb up your ladder now

It's time for you to dream away

For what a big day you've been through

You've done all the things that you wanted to do

All la glory, I'm second story

Feel so tall like a prison wall

I'm lookin for a star bright

To shine down your light now

And keep the little one safe and warm

Cause to her it's just a fantasy

And to me it's all a mystery.

All la glory, I'm second story

Feel so tall like a prison wall

Listen to the serenade

Little girl, promenade

You've got the sunshine in your hand

And maybe come some sweet day

You'll walk that Milky Way

All la glory, I'm second story

Feel so tall like a prison wall

The Band did a final farewell concert on Thanksgiving Day,1976 at the Winterland Ballroom in San Francisco after a catered Thanksgiving dinner for 5000 people where they invited their favorite musical influences to play with them, including Bob Dylan, mentor Ronnie Hawkins, Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, Eric Clapton, Van Morrison, Dr John, Paul Butterfield, Neil Diamond, the Staples Singers, Emmylou Harrris, Bobby Charles, even Muddy Waters and Ringo Starr. Michael McClure and Lawrence Ferlinghetti read poems before the concert. The best numbers on The Last Waltz to my mind were four songs with Dylan, Neil Young’s “Helpless,” Joni Mitchell’s “Coyote,” Van Moison’s “Caravan,” and Bobby Charles’ “Down South in New Orleans.” The Band rehearsed with all of them beforehand and played backup for every guest musician. Martin Scorcese filmed the concert with interview footage to make the best rock concert film ever made.

Besides the recording of “Like a Rolling Stone” on the Before the Flood album, which I think is the best live piece of rock and roll I’ve ever heard, The Band’s live 1971 New Year’s Eve concert album Rock of Ages is the best live rock album I know of. It starts off with a great version of the Motown hit “Don’t Do It,” accompanied wonderfully by “five of the best horn men in New York,” (as is the rest of the album, with a particularly soulful intro to “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down.”) Horn arrangements were done by the great Allen Toussaint. The album includes a great version of “Life Is a Carnival” from their Cahoots album. At midnight Garth Hudson launches into a few bars of “Auld Lang Syne,” like you’ve never heard it played before, in the middle of his virtuoso organ performance 0n “Chest Fever”. They finish with a great old rock and roll song, “(I Don’t Want To) Hang Up My Rock and Roll Shoes” by Chuck Willis,” which might have been part of their repertoire when they toured with Ronnie Hawkins before becoming The Band. It may be the best thing on the album.

The Band toured with Bob Dylan in 1974 and were featured in five songs on the concert album from the tour. The next year they came out with a strong studio album titled Northern Lights – Southern Cross (referring to the four Canadians and one Arkansas native who made up the band) that stands up well with their first two albums. It starts with “Forbidden Fruit,” a rocker that’s a warning against the drug addiction that Helm, Manuel, and Danko were caught up in when The Band made Stage Fright. It’s sung with conviction by Helm over a driving drumbeat. Robertson plays two really tasty electric guitar solos in his recognizable characteristic style.

Forbidden fruit

That's the fruit that you'd better not taste

Forbidden fruit

You've got one life that you'd better not waste

Little brother got caught in the web

He ran off to join the living dead

Been through the mill, seen the cross on the hill

He sold his soul just for a thrill

Forbidden fruit

In hot pursuit out on a limb

Forbidden fruit

Your whole world is closing in

It’s followed by Manuel singing a moving and tender “Hobo Jungle,” about an old hobo who freezes to death in a railyard. It’s accompanied by Manuel’s slow piano and Hudson’s wistful and solemn organ. It’s my second favorite song on the album.

There was a chill that night in the hobo jungle

Over the train yard lay a smooth coat of frost

And although nobody here really knows where they're goin

At the very same time nobody's lost

Then the fire went out and the night grew still

This old man lay frozen on the cold, cold ground

He was a stray bird and the road was his callin

Ridin the rods

Sleepin under the stars

Playin the odds from a rollin box car

She attended the funeral in the hobo jungle

Long were they lovers though never could they wed

Drifters and rounders, oooh, and distant friends

Here I lie without anger or regret

I'm in no one's debt

Next comes Helm singing “Ophelia,” an upbeat rocker about a woman everyone knows in the neighborhood who disappears without explanation, with a plea that she’ll return. It’s an infectious tune sung energetically by Helm with a tasty drum accompaniment and Hudson playing horns and wind instruments prominently.

Boards on the window

Mail by the door

What would anybody leave so quickly for?

Ophelia

Where have you gone?

The old neighborhood just ain't the same

Nobody knows just what became of

Ophelia

Tell me, what went wrong

Was it somethin' that somebody said?

Mama, I know we broke the rules

Was somebody up against the law?

Honey, you know I'd die for you

Ashes of laughter

The coast is clear

Why do the best things always disappear

Like Ophelia

Please darken my door

"Ophelia" is followed by “Acadian Driftwood,” which I think is second only to “The Weight” as Robertson’s best song, but not as relatable to most people because few Americans know about this slice of history. It tells the story of 11,500 catholic, French-speaking Acadians deported from their traditional homelands by the British during the Seven Years War (French and Indian War in the US) between 1755 and 1764, primarily from what became New Brunswick under the British. They frequently became indentured servants working off seven-year terms in exchange for food and lodging. Many eventually settled in what became Louisiana due to the French-speaking catholic culture there. “Acadian” was anglicized over time to “Cajun.”

The war was over and the spirit was broken

The hills were smokin as the men withdrew

We stood on the cliffs

Ooh, and watched the ships

Slowly sinking to their rendezvous

They signed a treaty and our homes were taken

Loved ones forsaken

They didn't give a damn

Try to raise a family

End up the enemy

Over what went down on the Plains of Abraham

Acadian driftwood

Gypsy tail wind

They call my home the land of snow

Canadian cold front movin in

What a way to ride

Oh, what a way to go

Then some returned to the motherland

The high command had them cast away

And some stayed on to finish what they started

They never parted

They're just built that way

We had kin livin south of the border

They're a little older and they've been around

They wrote in a letter life is a whole lot better

So pull up your stakes, children and come on down . . .

All we had was gone

Broke down along the coast

Ooh, but what hurt the most

When the people there said

"You better keep movin on" . . .

Everlasting summer filled with ill-content

This government had us walkin in chains

This isn't my turf

This ain't my season

Can't think of one good reason to remain

We worked the sugar fields up from New Orleans

It was ever green up until the floods

You could call it an omen

Points ya where you're goin

Set my compass north

I got winter in the blood

It's the historical saga of a people. I know of no other song quite like it. The closest thing would be fellow Canadian Gordon Lightfoot’s “Canadian Railroad Trilogy.” Manuel, Helm, and Danko trade off on vocals like they did on their first album, and the musical accompaniment is rich and melodic with acoustic guitar, accordion and a beautiful flute by Hudson plus Danko on violin, with his bass and Helm’s rhythmic drumming setting the steady pace. It’s a tale of persecution, hardship, and survival with a beautiful melody and great vocals that stands with “The Weight” as my two favorite songs by The Band.

“It Makes No Difference” is a song of lost love sung soulfully and gorgeously by Danko, my third favorite but not by much.

It makes no difference where I turn

I can't get over you and the flame still burns

It makes no difference, night or day

The shadow never seems to fade away

And the sun don't shine anymore

And the rains fall down on my door . . .

It makes no difference how far I go

Like a scar, the hurt will always show

And it makes no difference who I meet

They're just a face in the crowd on a dead-end street

And the sun don't shine anymore

And the rains fall down on my door . . .

Well, I love you so much

And it's all I can do

Just to keep myself from telling you

That I never felt so alone before

Robertson played live only twice more, playing three songs with the original five members after a Rick Danko solo show in 1978, and at The Band’s 1994 induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame with Danko and Hudson but not Helm, who disputed the song credit on some songs attributed solely to Robertson. They released one more studio album, Islands, to fulfill their Capitol contract so Warner Brothers could release The Last Waltz film and album. The Last Waltz would require another article just by itself. Robertson had had enough of life on the road and never toured again. Other albums were released with the remaining members and others filling in on guitar, but none captured their original spark or were successful. Eric Clapton at one point wanted to join The Band, but that would have fundamentally changed their sound and identity. Robertson, Danko, and Manuel played on Clapton’s No Reason to Cry album, which has Clapton and Robertson playing a beautiful guitar duet on “Black Summer Rain,” where you can tell who’s playing what notes because they play such different styles.

From 1968-1978 The Band made a huge impact on the music world, influencing Eric Clapton, Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, Van Morrison, George Harrison, the Grateful Dead, folk musicians Happy and Artie Traum, Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters, Joan Baez, Elton John, and certainly Bob Dylan. They were a refreshing reaction to the psychedelia of the late 60s that even the Grateful Dead distanced from on Workingman’s Dead and American Beauty. In 1965 they had talked with Sonny Boy Williamson about recording with him and being his backup band, but he died shortly afterward. They left us a kind of music that was original and uniquely theirs that fueled the Americana music movement. I’ve been listening to them with pleasure for 55 years.

Brett Nelson