This Wheel's on Fire

by Levon Helm

  “I saw the Hawks were making the big money because they worked seven nights a week, every week. I told my parents about Ronnie’s offer to join the band, but they still disapproved of my playing music in bars and taverns. Finally I had Ronnie talk them into it.

  “‘Mr. and Mrs. Hudson,’ Ronnie told them in his most earnest and straightforward manner, ‘I have a band of talented young men who are being held back by their lack of musical education. I want to hire your son Garth to come along and teach them music. I want them to learn how to read notation properly. I’ve offered Garth a higher wage than anyone else, a cash bonus to join us, and we will pay him an extra ten dollars a week for the lessons he gives the boys. We’ll also buy a new organ so Garth can be heard at his best. Now, how about it? Do we have your blessing on this?’

  “My parents, God bless them, finally said it was OK. This was in late 1961, around Christmastime. It was Levon, Robbie, Rick, Richard, and Garth for the first time.

  “That’s when I went to organ. Richard not only had the voice, he had this great rhythmic feel, so I never had to play that heavy left-hand stuff. We bought a Lowrey organ, which nobody else was using except that guy in Detroit. I played it for the next fifteen years.”

  I understood the qualms Garth’s family had. We all did, because back then being a professional musician wasn’t something you’d brag about. It wasn’t something your girlfriend could go tell everybody. Actually, it was a strike against you. I was almost twenty-two years old and making pretty good money, but I could barely get car insurance. They’d cancel you if they found out you were a musician. We were on their back page, along with athletes, jockeys, and race-car drivers.

  With Garth and that organ, we sounded like a rock and roll orchestra. We felt so enriched it was ungodly. He had sounds no one else had. He liked that pedal-steel-guitar stop on the Lowrey; it sounded like a fire-breathing dragon. He had a horn like a car horn hooked to the top of his Leslie speaker cabinet. He’d hit a frequency that sounded that horn, and it was wild.

  Garth was a serious musician. He spoke slowly and deliberately, and whored around less than us. Just having Garth as a teacher was an honor. He’d listen to a song on the radio in the Cadillac and tell us the chords as it went along. Complicated chord structures? No problem. Garth would figure them out, and we found ourselves able to play anything. Our horizons were lifted, and the thing became more fun. It was like we didn’t have to guess anymore, because we had a master among us. That’s how it felt.

  Garth also brought a second saxophone to the band. With Jerry Penfound’s baritone and Garth’s alto, we had a soul-band horn section when we needed one. That really changed our sound toward a more R&B feel from the rockabilly we’d been playing for almost four years.

  The main thing was, we were back to that double keyboard, Richard and Garth. That’s what we built on until we really thought we were the best band in the world.

  Nineteen sixty-two was the first full year of the new band. It was also the year that everything began to change for us, especially when the Hawk got married.

  Up till then, we were laughing all the time. Ronnie made sure that we had the worst reputation in North America. Richard always had a lot of girlfriends. He even chased girls that I was dating. If Robbie or Rick had a pretty girl, Richard might go after her too. “Son,” the Hawk used to say, laughing with paternal pride, “that Richard is a damn home wrecker!”

  “This was a good-looking group,” Bill Avis recalls. “When we came into a room, people looked. The women stared. We did everything with class, and there was nothing to worry about but a case of the clap and maybe the crabs. It was a much different era.”

  Yet I also can’t help but remember all the nights there weren’t wild parties, when we’d rehearse until dawn and then worry about where we wanted to go and how we were gonna get there. All those nights when Ronnie yelled, “It’s orgy time!” and Garth and I would wink at each other and try to stay focused on what we could do with the band if we had the chance.

  No one loved women more than the Hawk. You’d walk into Ronnie’s suite at the Frontenac Arms Hotel, where we were living by then, and there’d be girls on every couch, every chair, waiting to get into his room, where he’d be holding court in bed. But the Hawk’s attitude changed after he met gorgeous Wanda Nugurski, who showed up one day on the “Coke side” of the Concord Tavern in Toronto. That was the nonalcoholic part of the Concord, where all the young musicians would come to watch us and learn. The Hawk was really smitten with Wanda (“Dammit, Levon, she’s the only woman in the world who’s got a dildo with two gears!”) and married her on March 15, 1962. I had the honor of serving as best man. Ronnie had nominally fought the marriage all the way down the aisle, but he was twenty-seven years old and wanted to have a family. Actually, he wanted it all: the family and the life-style of the rock and roll star. Damn if the Hawk didn’t have it all, at least for a while.

  If Friday nights were hot for us, then Sundays were our downtime. We’d sleep late, play casino, drink Red Cap beer, and watch television. It was the only time in our lives things were quiet and we weren’t moving. Soon it seemed like Ronnie was more interested in Sundays than in Fridays, especially after Ronnie, Jr., was born a year after the wedding. That’s when things began to change.

  Of course, we were on the road a lot that year; one of the last of the old-time rock and roll bands. We played the middle of North America in a vertical arc from Molasses, Texas, to Timmins, Ontario—so far north it was only a couple of hours from the arctic tundra. We logged thousands of miles in Ronnie’s ’62 Cadillac, all of us crammed in there. One night the Hawk was sleeping, and Richard stubbed out a cigarette on Ronnie’s hand, which must have been resting on the ashtray. Oh God, the Hawk was mad! He didn’t smoke himself, and it was always an issue among the band. There might be some ash on the carpet, and he’d say, “See that, son?” He thought it was a nasty habit, and he said he was scared for us. Eventually the Hawk offered us a hundred dollars each if we’d quit, and the boys took him up on it. So when it was cigarette time, I’d eat one of those little boxes of raisins—six for a nickel. I’d pass some to my buddies in the backseat. Next thing you know, someone had dropped a raisin in the back of the car, so the sun would hit it just right. When we were unloading or going into a restaurant, the raisin got stepped on and smeared like a flapjack. The Hawk was displeased when he saw that. “Goddamn,” he growled, “I gave you guys a hundred to get off cigarettes. I’ll give you two hundred to get rid of these damn raisins!”

  It was around this time that Robbie and I bought our own Cadillac. Everyone in the band treated it like it was their car, and it was trashed in eight months. I think we got a Volkwagen bus after that.

  As usual, we went home that spring to play our southern circuit.

  Lavon Helm, age thirteen, hamboning at a 4-H Club talent show in Phillips County, Arkansas, circa 1953 (TURKEY SCRATCH ARCHIVES)

  Thurlow Brown, Linda Helm, and Lavon Helm at a show at Marvell High School, circa 1955 (COURTESY C. W. GATLIN)

  Sonny Boy Williamson and His King Biscuit Entertainers at radio station KFFA, Helena, Arkansas, circa 1943 (COURTESY KFFA/DELTA CULTURAL CENTER)

  Conway Twitty (second from left) and the Rock Housers, circa 1956 (MICHAEL OCHS ARCHIVES)

  Ronnie Hawkins and the Hawks when they arrived in New York in 1958. From left: Levon Helm, Ronnie Hawkins, Jimmy Ray “Luke” Paulman, and Will “Pop” Jones. (MICHAEL OCHS ARCHIVES)

  Ronnie Hawkins and the Hawks, circa 1960. From left: Stan Szelest, Rebel Paine, Ronnie, Robbie Robertson, and Levon Helm. Kneeling in front is band mascot, Freddie McNulty. (COURTESY RICHARD BELL)

  Ronnie Hawkins and the Hawks at the Brass Rail in Hamilton, Ontario, circa 1963. From left: Rick Danko on bass, Richard Manuel on piano, Ronnie (note the beatnik goatee), Levon on drums, Robbie Robertson on guitar, and Garth Hudson on Lowrey organ. (TURKEY SCRATCH ARCHIVES)

  Levon and the Hawks in New York, 1964. From left: Jerry “Is
h” Penfound (who played saxophone), Rick Danko, Levon, Richard Manuel, Garth Hudson, and Robbie Robertson. (TURKEY SCRATCH ARCHIVES)

  Levon and the Hawks were headlining Tony Mart’s big nightclub in Somers Point, New Jersey, in August 1965 when they were “discovered” by Bob Dylan. (TURKEY SCRATCH ARCHIVES)

  Bob Dylan, Robbie, and Levon go over Bob’s song lyrics backstage at Forest Hills, New York, on August 28, 1965. (PHOTO © 1967 DANIEL KRAMER)

  Bob Dylan, Harvey Brooks, Robbie, and Levon onstage at Forest Hills, August 28, 1965 (PHOTO © 1967 DANIEL KRAMER)

  Clockwise from top: Garth, Levon, and Richard playing football at Big Pink, Woodstock, New York, spring 1968 (ELLIOTT LANDY)

  Richard and Levon at Big Pink, spring 1968 (ELLIOTT LANDY)

  Just as photographer Elliott Landy was shooting The Band for the Music from Big Pink album sleeve, a friend of ours took off her clothes in an attempt to get us to lighten up. (ELLIOTT LANDY)

  The Big Pink group photo was taken at a house Levon and Rick were renting at nearby Wittenburg, New York, spring 1968. Our dog Hamlet, a gift from Bob Dylan, was present at the creation. (ELLIOTT LANDY)

  Garth Hudson instructs Levon in the finer points of dowsing, spring 1968. (ELLIOTT LANDY)

  The Band and their next of kin at Rick’s brother’s farm in Ontario (ELLIOTT LANDY)

  Robbie and Levon writing songs at Rick Danko’s house on Zena Road, early 1969 (ELLIOTT LANDY)

  The Band in the kitchen of Big Pink (ELLIOTT LANDY)

  Recording “Rag Mama Rag” in California, winter 1969. Producer John Simon leans over keyboard at left. (ELLIOTT LANDY)

  The Band posing for the brown album in Rick’s basement, early 1969 (ELLIOTT LANDY)

  Band rehearsal at the house shared by Garth and Richard on Glenford Road, 1969 (ELLIOTT LANDY)

  Richard, Robbie, and Levon work on lyrics for The Band in California, winter 1969. (ELLIOTT LANDY)

  Robbie Robertson and the hypnotist, San Francisco, April 1969 (ELLIOTT LANDY)

  Robbie, Levon, John Simon, Rick, and Albert Grossman before The Band’s first show at Winterland, San Francisco, April 1969 (ELLIOTT LANDY)

  The Band at the Fillmore East, New York City, May 1969 (ELLIOTT LANDY)

  Ronnie had his club and his farms in the Fayetteville area, and I bought a house for my folks in nearby Springdale. Friends of ours were putting in a development, interest rates were around 4 percent, and they lent me the down payment as well. My dad had stopped farming by then, and the family was ready for a move out of cotton country. I continued to send a little money home every payday—the band was making maybe $2,500 a week by then—and it was a better situation because the family could be together when the Hawks came down to touch home base every few months.

  Tension filled the air that summer and fall of 1962 because of the Cuban missile crisis. President John F. Kennedy found out that the Russians were building missile sites in Fidel Castro’s Cuba, a mere ninety miles from Florida. In October he went on television to announce he’d given Premier Nikita Khrushchev an ultimatum: Get the missiles out or else face an American blockade of Russian shipping to Cuba. “Naval blockade’s an act of war,” Ronnie mused one evening while waiting to go onstage. The Strategic Air Command was put on red alert. B-52s were flying overhead, and things seemed pretty apocalyptic. People were nervous. We’d all grown up with those air-raid drills in school, hadn’t we?

  We were in London, Ontario. “It looks bad, son,” the Hawk opined. “It could get into World War III.” I got pretty scared. If North America was going to be incinerated by nuclear bombs, I decided I didn’t want to die in Canada. I got a road map, and the Hawk and I planned our route in case of war. We could leave London, go through Sarnia, and head down through central Michigan. I wasn’t about to drive through Detroit. We figured we could get to Arkansas without hitting any major city on the Soviets’ target list.

  October 27 was the deadline Kennedy had given the Russians to pull out. That night we were playing the Brass Rail, and everyone was a little tense. Even Freddie McNulty was subdued. There was a feeling of the impending end of civilization. We were right in the middle of a tune when the Hawk got onstage and killed the music with a wave of his hand.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” he said gravely, “I have an announcement to make.”

  I drum-rolled the crowd to a hush.

  “This is an emergency announcement.”

  Everyone gasped. Ronnie wasn’t smiling. He was reading from a piece of paper. From my drum stool I could see people in back grabbing their coats, ready to bust out of there.

  “Word has just reached us … that we’ve stopped three Russian ships … with our naval blockade in the Caribbean Sea.”

  Pin drop.

  “Our sailors went on board the Russian ships … and discovered they’d all been loaded with Vaseline. So they diverted ’em to The Virgin Islands! Haw haw haw haw haw!!!!!”

  Chapter Four

  LEVON AND THE HAWKS (ONE STEP AHEAD OF LAND OF 1000 DANCES)

  I too got married late in 1962. I figured if the Hawk could do it, so could I.

  My philosophy had always been not to burden any young woman with my presence for too long a time. The life of a musician was nothing to be married to, and I could never envision settling down and having children. I was of the road; it was my life, and I was living it to the hilt and beyond. We may have had a hard time getting credit cards and insurance, but we felt freer than anyone else in the land as we crisscrossed province, prairie, and state. We were in our early twenties, playing and traveling, and didn’t have to answer to anybody. It was the kind of life where if you had a problem today, you could be five hundred miles away from it the next day.

  At the same time, my draft board back in Helena was determined to selectively service my ass over to West Germany, the way they had Elvis’s. Anyone could see how the army had changed him, how Elvis’s incredible edge was just gone. I married my friend Connie Orr, a Toronto lady who’d married a man named George, had a son, George, Jr., but was no longer with George, Sr. So I stepped in—strictly platonic, it was—and married her, thus becoming a Canadian landed immigrant. That took care of my draft board, and Connie (loyalty was and is her middle name) is still a great friend of mine.

  In February 1963 we all went to New York to cut some tracks with Henry Glover for Roulette. The label wanted new versions of “Bo Diddley” and “Who Do You Love” to exploit the renewed interest in R&B that had surfaced in the wake of the folk-music boom. Although we hadn’t recorded in eighteen months, we weren’t rusty. Robbie howled and screamed on guitar, the Hawk growled and hollered the lyrics, and the band duplicated the speed-demon rhythms we liked to do in the bars. “Bo Diddley #117”/“Who Do You Love” was released as a single in March.

  We were back in New York that May, and by then we were starting to squabble with the Hawk. When I say “we,” I mean Robbie and myself. The Hawk was the daddy of the group, who wanted to stick to the old ways (rockabilly), while Robbie and I were the rebellious teenagers who wanted to push the band deeper into R&B. We were always after Ronnie to record blues-type material, so to humor us we cut a few things like “Mojo Hand” and Muddy Waters’s “She’s Nineteen Years Old.” These were, I believe, the last sessions we did with Ronnie. Our last single together, “High Blood Pressure” (with a jazzy organ solo by Garth), came out in June.

  One day we were working with Henry at Bell Sound, and after Ronnie had left for the day Henry let us—just the band—cut a version of Bobby Bland’s classic “Further on up the Road,” just about our favorite number to play. When we finished and had listened to the playback, Henry asked us when we were going out on our own.

  This gave us ideas. The Hawk was settling in with his family, and we were getting interested in different things, from “Chicago Green” to Chicago Blues. That night, in our room at the Hotel Forrest in Manhattan, Robbie and I began to talk about wild possibilities. “Levon,” he said, “like, do we really need Ronnie?
”

  It was a combination of a lot of things that led us to leave the Hawk late in 1963. But the band really split up because of age as much as anything else. We were younger, and everyone wanted that independence that youth craves. Ronnie had a set of rules, and he’d fine you if you broke ’em. He played the kind of music he was interested in, and we wanted a band where everyone played and had a voice—literally. We were already swapping the singing duties around, working in harmonies as we needed them. With Richard, Rick, and me, we had the beginnings of the voice that became The Band. Three singers on one song; that became our trademark. We were already doing it before we split with Ronnie, because some nights he didn’t bother showing up. If we were up in Grand Bend for a week, we’d do the first two or three nights by ourselves. At the end of the week, the Hawk would show up at the end of the night to do a set. He’d wait for the weekend to appear because he was settling down and wanting to be with his family.