A week ago, Garth Hudson, once a musical all -rounder and soul of The Band, died in a nursing home in upstate New York at the age of 87. Now his old friend and companion reminds of the level -headed man again. “He was a wonderful guy and the driving force behind The Band. Just listen to the original recording of “The Weight” and you will understand it, “wrote Bob Dylan on X.
“The Weight” is located on “Music From Big Pink”, the debut album by The Band published in 1968. Dylan had painted the album cover and contributed some songs. At that time, the musicians already shared a three -year history. Hudson and his colleagues Levon Helm, Richard Manuel, Rick Danko and Robbie Robertson, who still called themselves Levon & the Hawks at the time, met Bob Dylan in 1965 when he was looking for a band after his turn to electrically reinforced music. And so they finally accompanied him on his US tour from October 1965 and also on the legendary European tour in 1966. (Except for Levon Helm, who no longer stopped the hostility of the folk fans, who wanned the acoustic Dylan, and acknowledged the service at the end of November 1965.)
Garth Hudson was responsible for the Basement Tapes
After Dylan’s retreat to the Catskill Mountains in the summer of 1966 Dylan met with the band to make music in back rooms and basement rooms. Together they explored the American song tradition and tried out new songs that Dylan wanted to offer other artists: inside. We owe the recordings of these informal sessions to Hudson, who recorded these greatsters with his two-track Revox machine.
Dylan was also accompanied by The Band during his live comeback in 1974. He was of course on stage at the legendary farewell concert of the band, “The Last Waltz”.
In a touching short documentary of the Rolling Stone from 2014 you can see how Garth Hudson returned to the pink house that gave his name to The Band’s debut. Here in the Catskill Mountains near West Sauckerties he lived with Rick Danko and Richard Manuel in early 1967. In the basement he had music with his bandmates and Dylan.