I’ve always questioned any music fan who isn’t seriously moved watching The Last Waltz, and I’ve continued to think that way even after reading all of the literature — all of the feedback that suggests just how little Levon Helm thought of that whole dog ‘n’ pony show — because The Band had something you find once a generation, if that. Even with the undeniable sadness captured in the concert film, those five guys, playing together, just couldn’t help but share that something and bring along musicians that loved and respected them to share that something. I don’t know that anyone’s every quite captured what that is in words. Something…simpatico, but whatever it was, it yielded so much greater than the some of its parts — so much music that was deeply felt, majestic, down-home, passionate, you name it. Levon Helm was the core of that. It wasn’t just the playing or the vocals, either, because he seemed to bring that to every single ensemble — every single guest sit-in or one-off, too — he played with. HE had something.
[Photo by Parker Harrington]
It’s hard to add to everything that’s been said already in the wake of Levon’s passing, but every show I saw in the last five or six years, with the Ramble band and in other contexts, felt honest. Levon didn’t play any other way. Even with the setlist predictable, you were always surprised how much you were moved, how nourishing hearing a song like The Weight for the 9,000th time could be because you could see Levon grinning that good-god-I’m-a-lucky-man grin and making it fresh for time 9,001. I remember a show in Boston in 2008 when Phoebe Snow sat in with the band and blew the doors off the place singing lead on the most gorgeously transcendent version of Into the Mystic. When it ended, the crowd roared, and she and Levon shared a smile and basked in it for a second — a million road miles and hard times between them, but all of that somehow worth it because they could still get to moments like that. Both are now gone in body, here in spirit.
I’ll miss hearing Levon sing and hearing a rasp where a howl should be because he still wanted to howl and he’d be damned if he wouldn’t push the envelope every now and again. I’ll miss that wonderful moment in every Levon show when the band is relaxed and ready for hootenanny, the strummings pick up, Levon cracks another golden smile, and they all burst into Rag Mama Rag. I’ll miss it all a lot. We all will.
My wife and I had planned to go to a Ramble as recently as November and life got in the way, as it tends to do when you think you’ll have more time to do it later. Doubt the Rambles will go away, but they’ll be different now. Don’t postpone joy. A lesson — one of many — from Levon.
PAGE THREE = Parker Harrington
