Tag Archives: Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
Levon Helm and The Band – The Weight Lyrics
Seeing as we have the youtube video of ”The Weight,” as originally recorded by Levon Helm and The Band for their 1968 debut album Music From Big Pink, we thought we would also give you the lyrics.
“The Weight” was used in the film “Easy Rider” but could not be licensed for the soundtrack. To deal with this, ABC-Dunhill commissioned Smith, who recorded for the label at the time, to record a cover version of the song for the soundtrack album.
Levon Helm and The Band – “The Weight” Video
Click the image to start:
Levon Helm and The Band – The Weight Lyrics
I pulled into Nazareth, I was feelin’ about half past dead;
I just need some place where I can lay my head.
“Hey, mister, can you tell me where a man might find a bed?”
He just grinned and shook my hand, and “No!”, was all he said.
(Chorus:)
Take a load off Fannie, take a load for free;
Take a load off Fannie, And (and) (and) you can put the load right on me.
I picked up my bag, I went lookin’ for a place to hide;
When I saw Carmen and the Devil walkin’ side by side.
I said, “Hey, Carmen, come on, let’s go downtown.”
She said, “I gotta go, but m’friend can stick around.”
(Chorus)
Go down, Miss Moses, there’s nothin’ you can say
It’s just ol’ Luke, and Luke’s waitin’ on the Judgement Day.
“Well, Luke, my friend, what about young Anna Lee?”
He said, “Do me a favor, son, woncha stay an’ keep Anna Lee
company?”
(Chorus)
Crazy Chester followed me, and he caught me in the fog.
He said, “I will fix your rags, if you’ll take Jack, my dog.”
I said, “Wait a minute, Chester, you know I’m a peaceful man.”
He said, “That’s okay, boy, won’t you feed him when you can.”
(Chorus)
Catch a Cannonball, now, t’take me down the line
My bag is sinkin’ low and I do believe it’s time.
To get back to Miss Annie, you know she’s the only one.
Who sent me here with her regards for everyone.
Levon Helm and The Band were due to continue touring this year until Levon became increasing ill due to cancer. He died on 19th April 2012 in NYC.
RIP Levon Helm
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Levon Helm Drummer Dies at 71
Levon Helm Drummer and Singer in “The Band” Died yesterday at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City. His Wife and Daughter announced on his website on 17th April that he was”in the final stages of his battle with cancer” thanked fans and asked for their prayers.
Levon Helm Drummer Dies at 71
Levon Helm, Drummer Dies at 71 - Photo by Parkerjh via Wikipedia
In the late Nineties, Helm – whose singing anchored Band classics like “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down,” “Up on Cripple Creek,” “Rag Mama Rag,” and “The Weight” – was diagnosed with throat cancer and underwent 28 radiation treatments, eventually recovering his voice. In recent weeks, however, Helm had canceled a number of shows, including one at the New Orleans Jazz Fest on April 27th and another in Montclair, New Jersey. A note posted to his website on Tuesday from his daughter Amy and wife Sandy said that Helm was in the “final stages of his battle with cancer. Please send your prayers and love to him as he makes his way through this part of his journey. Thank you fans and music lovers who have made his life so filled with joy and celebration…he has loved nothing more than to play, to fill the room up with music, lay down the back beat, and make the people dance! He did it every time he took the stage.”
Born May 26, 1940 in Arkansas, Helm was literally a witness to the birth of rock & roll; as a teenager, he saw Elvis Presley, Little Richard, Johnny Cash and Jerry Lee Lewis in concert and was inspired to play drums after seeing Lewis’ drummer, Jimmy Van Eaton. (Helm went on to play mandolin and other stringed instruments as well). In 1960, Helm joined the backup band of rockabilly wildman Ronnie Hawkins – a group that would eventually include Robbie Robertson, Richard Manuel, Rick Danko and Garth Hudson, all future members of the Band.
The musicians broke from Hawkins to form their own group – their names included the Crackers and Levon and the Hawks – but it was their association with Bob Dylan that cemented their reputation. After Dylan saw the group in a club (either in Canada or New Jersey, depending on the source), he invited Helm and guitarist Robertson to join his electric band. “Bob Dylan was unknown to us,” Helm wrote in his 1993 memoir This Wheel’s on Fire. “I knew he was a folksinger and songwriter whose hero was Woody Guthrie. And that’s it.” Robertson and Helm were in Dylan’s electric band for his controversial, frequently booed show at New York’s Forest Hills Tennis Stadium. Afterward, various members of the Band played on Dylan’s Blonde on Blonde and toured with him in 1966. (Helm left temporary in 1965, tired of the ongoing hostility from Dylan’s folk fans.)
Recuperating in Woodstock after his 1966 motorcycle accident, Dylan again hooked up with the band that would soon be the Band. Before Helm rejoined them, they recorded the landmark Basement Tapes, and the Band’s crackling, homespun take on American roots music began to take shape. Rechristening themselves the Band, they signed to Capitol Records and released two classic albums, Music From Big Pink (1968) and The Band (1969). Although Robertson was the Band’s principal songwriter, it was Helm’s beautifully gruff and ornery voice that brought the Canadian Robertson’s mythic Americana songs to life. He was also one of rock’s earliest singing drummers.
In 1976, at Robertson’s urging, the Band broke up after its farewell concert, known as “The Last Waltz.” In meetings before the concert and as recounted in This Wheel’s on Fire, Helm was adamantly opposed to the group disbanding. “I didn’t want any part of it,” he wrote. “I didn’t want to break up the band.” He begrudgingly went along, but his relationship with Robertson was never the same. After the show, Helm formed his own band, Levon Helm and the RCO All Stars, featuring fellow legends Dr. John, Steve Cropper, and Booker T. Jones, and recorded several solo albums. Helm also ventured into acting with an acclaimed role in 1980′s Coal Miner’s Daughter, playing Loretta Lynn (Sissy Spacek’s) father. But he couldn’t leave the Band behind, and with Danko, Manuel, and Hudson, he formed a new version of the Band in the early Eighties, recording three new studio albums with them.
The Band continued for a while after Manuel’s suicide by hanging in 1986, but Danko’s death in 1999 of heart failure ended the Band once and for all. By then, Helm was dealing with throat cancer. After his recovery, he began holding intimate concerts in his combination barn and studio in Woodstock, called the “Midnight Ramble,” in part to pay his medical bills. The low-key, woodsy performances became must-see shows and attracted a rock who’s who; Elvis Costello, Natalie Merchant, the Grateful Dead’s Phil Lesh and Donald Fagen were among the many who joined Helm and his band. The Ramble shows led to two acclaimed Helm solo albums – 2007′s Dirt Farmer, which won a Grammy in the Best Traditional Folk category, and 2009′s Electric Dirt, which resulted in a Grammy for Best Americana album. “This go-round has been a lot more fun,” Helm told Rolling Stone in 2009. “Now I know I’ve got enough voice to do it.”
When the Band was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1994, Helm didn’t attend, revealing that his feud with Robertson was still on. “I thought Levon was going to show,” Robertson told Rolling Stone a few years later. “Then that evening they said he changed his mind and wasn’t going to come. And I thought, ‘Oh, God, it would have been better if he was here.’”
via Levon Helm, Drummer and Singer of the Band, Dead at 71 | Music News | Rolling Stone.
Helm was surrounded by his friends and band mates at the end and will forever be remembered for laying down the back beat and making people dance.
Levon Helm Drummer Dies at 71. RIP.
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame 2012
The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame 2012 induction was full of controversy as might be expected when dealing with a volatile band such as Guns n Roses. Although you might think that these absences would make the induction less explosive, it turns out they didn’t matter at all. In fact, it was one of the best Hall of Fame induction ceremonies in recent memory.
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame 2012 Guns n Roses Induction
Click on the image below to see the video introduction for Slash!
On their way into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Guns N’ Roses got together for one more gig.
Axl Rose missed it.
The hedonistic hard rockers, who became the world’s top music act amid endless dysfunction, members of Guns N’ Roses reunited for three songs on Saturday night before 6,000 fans, many of whom were thrilled to see at least most of the band’s original lineup jam on classic hits like “Sweet Child O’ Mine” and “Paradise City.”
Rose, the band’s frontman and ringmaster of the G N’ R traveling sex, drugs and rock and roll circus, declined to attend the induction, saying he didn’t want to be part of the ceremony because it “doesn’t appear to be somewhere I’m actually wanted or respected.”
Alter Bridge singer Myles Kennedy took Axl’s place as lead and hit all the right notes making sure that Axle was hardly missed. Fans were screaming out “F*** Axl” during the night, but the moment the band started to play “Mr Brownstone” it was all about the music! To prove that the original G’n'R are bigger than one member!
Guns N’ Roses were one of the headliners of this year’s eclectic group of inductees, which included the Red Hot Chili Peppers, the Beastie Boys, folk icon Donovan, late singer-songwriter Laura Nyro, and British bands the Small Faces and Faces.
The event lasted well into the early morning with an All-Star jam featuring some of rock’s biggest names closing the 5 1-2 hour ceremony with a stirring rendition of Stevie Wonder’s “Higher Ground.”
Hours earlier, Chili Peppers lead singer Anthony Kiedis said it was strange to be enshrined while the band was touring.
“We’re going somewhere,” Kiedis said. “How can we stop and take an award when really we’re just halfway there? But it is nice to be together with people that we spent some incredible years along the way writing songs and playing shows in little theaters and sweaty little transvestite clubs and having the time of our lives.”
Cleveland rocked without Rose.
McKagan and Slash did not mention Rose during their brief remarks but then took the stage with Myles Kennedy, a member of a side project with Slash, singing lead vocals.
Like Guns N’ Roses, the Red Hot Chili Peppers emerged from Los Angeles during the 1980s when Sunset Strip’s rock scene was dominated by “hair” bands more concerned with their tight lycra pants and eyeliner than their sound. Not the Chili Peppers, who found their unique groove by blending punk, funk, rock, and rap.
While their lineup has undergone some changes — founding guitarist Hillel Slovak died of a heroin overdose in 1988 — Kiedis and bassist Flea have survived personal highs and lows and the band remains one of music’s top live acts.
Kiedis said Slovak would have loved the honor.
“I think that he would have a good laugh,” Kiedis said. “Yeah, it would certainly mean something to him as he cared deeply about music and the love of the brotherhood of being in a band and being a creative force in the universe, which he is and always will be a brother in everything we do.”
Comedian Chris Rock, a longtime fan and friend of the band, inducted the Chili Peppers.
via Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inducts Guns N’ Roses, Red Hot Chili Peppers | The Music Mix | EW.com.
Also missing from Rock and Roll Hall of Fame 2012 was Rod Stewart who was due to perform with the Small Faces. Unfortunately he was taken ill and Mick Hucknall of Simply Red took his place as he has been gigging for a while with the Small Faces.
