At the height of summer of 1976, the sun was setting on The Band. Having ushered in the decade’s folk-rock movement by seamlessly weaving elements of rock, blues, jazz and country, The Band was at its breaking point.
Guitarist and songwriter Robbie Robertson was tired of the road and interested in exploring new musical avenues, pianist Richard Manuel was still recovering from a boating accident, and Garth Hudson, Levon Helm and Rick Danko were all ready to go their separate ways.
As the group prepared for their farewell concert, one that would go down in history, they released The Best of The Band, a retrospective of timeless classics that would influence music for generations to come.
Capitol Records/UMe have released the newly remastered The Best of The Band on vinyl, CD, and Super High Material (SHM) CD. The long out-of-print LP version will be available on standard-weight black vinyl, marking the first time it’s been available since the 1980s. Both the CD and SHM CD versions have been mastered for digital format, with the SHM CD utilizing a special polycarbonate material that leads to additional clarity, depth, and definition of sound.
Released on July 16, 1976, The Best of The Band is a precursor to a landmark moment in music history. Having first formed in the 1960s as Ronnie Hawkins’ backing band, The Hawks, the group— Helm (drums, vocals, mandolin), Robertson (guitar, piano, vocals), Danko (bass, vocals, fiddle), Manuel (keyboards, vocals, drums), and Hudson (keyboards, horns)—would back Bob Dylan during his controversial electric “plugged-in” phase.
Rechristening themselves as The Band, the group recorded their landmark debut album, 1968’s Music From Big Pink, featuring “Tears of Rage” and the song that would become the group’s enduring signature, “The Weight.” Drawing from the American roots music panoply of country, blues, R&B, gospel, soul, rockabilly, the honking tenor sax tradition, hymns, funeral dirges, brass band music, folk, and rock ‘n’ roll, The Band forged their singular sound that would forever change the course of popular music.
The Band followed in 1969 with their masterpiece, their seminal eponymous album, which would go on to be lovingly called The Brown Album for its iconic cover. With classics like “Up On Cripple Creek,” performed in a star-making moment on The Ed Sullivan Show, and “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down,” The Band’s fame skyrocketed and their status was cemented as one of the most exciting and revolutionary bands in years.
Between 1970-76, The Band released four remarkable studio albums, including 1970’s Stage Fright (“The Shape I’m In”), 1971’s Cahoots (“Life Is A Carnival”) and 1975’s Northern Lights—Southern Cross (“It Makes No Difference,” “Ophelia”) plus the sensational 1972 live record, Rock Of Ages (“Don’t Do It”), recorded at the Academy Of Music in New York City, until exhaustion and creative differences were too much to handle. They opted to lower the curtain on Thanksgiving 1976 with a performance at the Winterland Ballroom in San Francisco.
The farewell gala would grow to include performances by friends such as Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, Van Morrison, Muddy Waters and Bob Dylan. Six weeks before the concert, Robertson reached out to filmmaker Martin Scorcesse to see if he’d film the show for posterity’s sake. The result was The Last Waltz, one of the greatest concert films ever made.
In the decades since their release, both The Last Waltz and The Best of the Band have stood as testaments to The Band’s undeniable place in rock and roll history. In 1994, The Band was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Though every member has passed on, their legacy endures, and the upcoming The Best of the Band is a perfect primer for those just discovering The Band’s genius and longtime fans eager to have the hits on vinyl once again.
In other Band news, the sequel to Robbie Robertson’s New York Times bestselling memoir, Testimony, titled Insomnia, will be released on November 11th via Penguin Random House. The late rock legend tells the story of his wild ride with Martin Scorsese – as friends, adventure-seekers, and boundary-pushing collaborators. For four decades, Robertson produced music for Scorsese’s films, a relationship that began when Robertson convinced Scorsese to direct The Last Waltz, the iconic film of the Band’s farewell performance at the Winterland Ballroom on Thanksgiving 1976. Insomnia is an intimate portrait of a remarkable creative friendship between two titans of American arts, one that would explore the outer limits of excess and experience before returning to tell the tale.
And just in time for the holidays, Kate Hudson has released a gorgeous cover of The Band’s holiday staple, “Christmas Must Be Tonight.” “When you speak of The Band, you are speaking directly to the heart, soul and backbone of rock’s roots,” Hudson explains. “Before there was roots rock, The Band was creating a sound that brought it all together into something that was so organic, breathtaking, real. When the opportunity to record ‘Christmas Must Be Tonight’ came to me, I absolutely had to do it. So iconic, it’s a song I knew growing up with during our Colorado Christmases. It was an honor to re-record it.”
