For critics, audiences and no-lesser peers than the Beatles, they had come to represent authenticity personified. On tracks like “The Weight” and “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down,” principal songwriter Robbie Robertson alchemized the group’s hard-won experience into songs whose subject matter was the grand mosaic of human comedy and endless suffering, with an emphasis on those who survive and persevere.
By the time they issued the twinned masterpieces Music From Big Pink in 1968 and The Band in 1969, their polymathic command of multiple genres, and self-conscious embrace of traditional American folk, country, bluegrass, and zydeco had established them as the thinking fan’s alternative to the diminishing returns of psychedelia and the counterculture. After many tours of duty backing the rockabilly legend Ronnie Hawkins and providing the muscle behind Bob Dylan’s move towards electric rock, the four Canadians and one Arkansan comprising the Band were pedigreed to a legendary extent even before making their first album.
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