50 Years Later: Revisiting The Band’s Finely Polished ‘Cahoots’ LP

If The Band’s Stage Fright found the iconic group in the early stages of disarray, then Cahoots (released 9/15/71) documents the quintet almost wholly lacking in momentum. The groundswell of acclamation generated by the word-of-mouth that arose around their 1968 debut, Music From Big Pink,  had crested in the wake of releasing of their eponymous second LP (the so-called ‘Brown Album), one of the most famous albums of its era. The one-time backing band for rockabilly master Ronnie Hawkins as well as Bob Dylan, the transformed Hawks rode that wave of fame through the personal and artistic fractures were apparent in that aforementioned third album, so with fifty years of hindsight, the single word of the ensuing LP’s title carries a tremendous irony: Cahoots is a creation of the mere facade of fraternity that once bonded these five musicians. 

The Band’s fourth studio work is the most highly polished entry in their discography. But the sterling sound as produced by the quintet itself (recorded and mixed by Mark Harman as the very first project to take place at Albert Grossman’s Bearsville Sound Studios) is the only positive homogeneity of the record; in stark contrast to the well-practiced unity of their past, the players would emit all the anonymity of studio sessioneers were it not for the highly-individualized instrumental styles, especially those of bassist Rick Danko and drummer Levon Helm. Consequently, it’s worth hearing the form 2000 remastered and expanded reissue for the impeccable audio alone, but just barely. 

Optimum sonics can’t fully camouflage the lack of substance in  Robbie Robertson tunes like “Smoke Signal” or “Volcano.” Both sound like the work of a songwriter at a loss for ideas and without the patience or persistence to completely craft compositions with at least a modicum of significance. Elsewhere, the group’s guitarist is missing in action as an instrumentalist too, though it is certainly no shortfall to hear the versatile Garth Hudson take the majority of solos on various keyboards or saxophone, Yet his very prominence here only further points up the shortfalls in ensemble playing that, on “Thinkin’ Out Loud,” to name just one, sounds disjointed or worse, disengaged.

Lacking the cohesive wherewithal for inspiration leaves Robertson straining for profundity on tunes such as “Last of the Blacksmiths.” The latter might well have been the name for this album if The Band had been honest and forthright with itself at this time: internal dissension had rent the supreme uniformity of their playing and singing to such a degree that, “The Moon Struck One” comes across as nothing so much as an unintentional depiction of the theme of the composition, a highly-romanticized fragment of recollection bearing little resemblance to the truth of what actually happened. Little wonder it’s played in as desultory a fashion as the cliche-ridden “Where Do We Go From Here?:” a careful listening on headphones to 24-bit engineering of the millennium release reveals how hollow at the core are such recordings.

Likewise, the awkward attempt at a fraternity that is “4% Pantomime.” Essentially a duet between keyboardist vocalist Richard Manuel and the quintet’s Woodstock neighbor of the time Van Morrison, this nebulous number carries a bitter subtext based on the purported reference to alcohol in its title, (with which both individuals struggled during the course of their lives). That glib correlation is indicative of the flippant attitude about substances that was, by various accounts, beginning to infest an upper New York state community once deemed idyllic for its bucolic environs alone.

Throughout Cahoots, The Band sounds like they are reaching for what once came naturally and feeling altogether uncomfortable as they do so. On “The River Hymn,” for instance, the fivesome strain to evoke an idealized past via the imagery in the lyrics and the rotation of lead vocals that distinguished their earliest recordings (a facet they admired in the Staple Singers and adopted as their own). With the retrospect of five decades, the two highlights of the album are direct and deliberate evocations of their brilliant past: “Life Is A Carnival” is all the exultation of the Rock of Ages live album thanks largely to New Orleans icon Allen Toussaint’s horn arrangement, while “When I Paint My Masterpiece” finds the one-time road warriors of Dylan’s covering his tune with a certain wry humor: it is one of the last vestiges of personality the fivesome conjures up here. 

Knowingly juxtaposed as such or not, these two cuts also create seamless continuity of mood equally fitting for both tunes. Bonus content on the aforementioned re-release unfortunately does not shed much light on the machinations at the heart of Cahoots, as such extra material sometimes can, but rather reaffirms the paucity of ideas at the heart of this effort. The ‘early studio take’ of “Endless Highway” predates the live recording from subsequent live performances (included on Before The Flood, the document of the 1974 reunion tour of Dylan and The Band) and features one of Richard Manuel’s most expressive recorded vocals, not mention some mighty spirited piano playing. 

In contrast, on the ‘alternate take’ of The Bard’s number, Helm hasn’t quite grasped the nuance of the lyrics with his vocal. That also happens to be the case with this cover of Marvin Gaye’s “Don’t Do It;” while Levon’s ultra-snappy drumming drives the ensemble–along with Robbie’s most fiery guitar playing on all the sixteen tracks on this edition–the pained pleading in his voice keeps it from becoming the riveting opener of the previously-referenced concert collection from the Academy of Music shows that took place later the same year of this record’s release. 

A cull from that legendary collaboration between Dylan and The Band, The Basement Tapes, “Bessie Smith,” only further points up The Band’s fall from artistic grace that took place over the course of the four years since those recordings in the summer of 1967: for one thing, songwriting team-ups like this one between Danko and Robertson were a thing of the past. More to the point, and specifically in the context of an album that betrays such a precarious balance between reverence for the past and a healthy respect for change, the insight derived from a first-person recollection of the famous blueswoman represents a clarity missing from compositions here like “Shoot Out In Chinatown:” 

Cahoots certainly has its admirers, above and beyond its most devoted fans, one of whom was writer Jon Landau who waffled with embarrassing ambivalence in his conclusion about the record writing for Rolling Stone Magazine. But it wasn’t until two years later, on their rootsy album of covers, Moondog Matinee, that The Band radiates a palpable acceptance of the passage of time the likes of which they so struggle to communicate even with the front cover, painted by New York artist/illustrator Gilbert Stone, as well as the photograph on the back by Richard Avedon.

The latter’s long-range inner sleeve photo of the five men virtually in a corner of the spacious room where the shot was taken speaks volumes about their state of mind at the time. Such is that confining perspective 1975’s Northern Lights, Southern Cross is all the more remarkable as one of the standouts of the iconic group’s discography. Carefully crafted in the wake of their studio and stage reunion with Dylan the year prior, from the vantage point of newly-established homes in California, including the construction of their own recording facilities (fittingly (disingenuously?) named Shangri-La), the confluence of circumstances was just the boost The Band needed to restore their individual and collective flow of creative juices.

That resurgence in itself, however, renders even more confounding the decision to retire from live performing. Celebrated in 1978 with the star-studded gala concert called The Last Waltz, its backstory is as amorphous as the music issued on Cahoots, the end result of which is ultimately a reminder of the measure of the lasting influence of The Band’s best work: even that which doesn’t rise to superlative levels remains an object of fascination a half-century after its release.