main songwriter), Levon Helm (drums,
vocals), Rick Danko (bass guitar, vocals),
organist Garth Hudson, and keyboard-
ist and vocalist Richard Manuel—had
toured with Bob Dylan. But they had
their own unique sound, a blend of
blues, country, folk, and rock, made all
the more distinctive by the voices of the
three main singers: Manuel’s sonorous
baritone and searing falsetto, Danko’s
aching tenor, and Arkansan Helm’s
whiskey drawl. The Band’s debut
album, 1968’s Music from Big Pink, drew
critical praise and featured the songs
“Tears of Rage” and “The Weight,” the
latter of which was featured in the film
Easy Rider. At the festival, the group
took the stage to what Helm remem-
bered as an “inhuman roar from the
dark hillside.” Their set included “Chest
Fever,” “Baby Don’t You Do It,” “Tears of
Rage,” “I Shall Be Released,” and “The
Weight.” “We played a slow, haunting
set of mountain music,” Robertson said.
“I remember looking out there, and it
seemed as though the kids were looking
at us kind of funny. We were playing the
same way we played in our living room
and that might have given the impres-
sion that we weren’t up for it... As for
the event itself, you feel proud to have
been a part of it, you feel it was amazing,
you feel it was a first... But as a musical
experience for The Band, we were like
orphans in the storm out there.”
AFTER WOODSTOCK: The Band wasn’t
featured in the Woodstock film because
of contractual wrangling, but the group
would get its own big-screen treat-
ment eight years later with Scorsese’s
The Last Waltz, an account of their 1976
farewell concert that is considered
one of the greatest music documenta-
ries ever made. Highly influential and
squarely on rock’s A-list—with other
classic hits including “Up on Cripple
Creek,” and “The Night They Drove
Old Dixie Down”—The Band drifted
apart in the late ’70s, reunited in 1983
(sans Robertson, who tired of tour-
ing), but suffered a devastating blow
when Manuel, who had fallen off the
wagon after giving up drink and drugs,
76 LIFE WOODSTOCK