The Band's 1968 debut, 'Music From Big Pink' had recieved pre release plaudits from Eric Clapton and George Harrison, and their work with Bob Dylan (on his controversial 1966 world tour and the boot-legged 'Basement Tapes') had gained them respect. But by the time of their second album The Band were all things to all people. Their musical virtuosity was dazzling and while they could swing with abandon ('Rag Mama Rag', 'Up On Cripple Creek') they could tug at heart-strings too ('The Unfaithful Servant', 'Whispering Pines'). But best were their down home values, a John Ford vision of an America split by the generation gap, the turbulence of Viet Nam, a scorn for all that had gone before. While other rockstars railed against the Nixonian values of their parents, Robbie Robertson asked benignly "Wouldn't it be nice just to see the folks, listen once again to the stale old jokes?"
Robertson gave his audience an identity and the opportunity to appreciate what had passed. "Take what you need and leave the rest," sang Levon achingly on 'The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down', "but they should never have taken the very best!" He was singing about how the old south had been vanquished, but he could have been singing about the rough hewn beauty of The Band. (Vox Magazine. 1991).
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