This Wheel's on Fire

by Levon Helm

  John Simon: “I’m pretty sure that Levon is the only honest, live element in The Last Waltz, with the exception of Muddy Waters’s vocal. Everything else was overdubbed and redone. Levon was basically gone, because he was disgusted with certain of the business practices. Robbie asked him to do his part over again, but Levon had nothing to do with it. He told me that he just didn’t think any of it was fair.

  “Robbie was right in that there were some good reasons for overdubbing the whole thing. Richard wasn’t singing well, Rick’s bass was out of tune, and Robbie wanted to improve his guitar solos. Also, the horns were recorded completely out of balance and had to be redone in New York with arrangements Henry Glover and I put together. The great thing was that Levon didn’t need to do it over. He got it right the first time, and those were the drum tracks used in the final mix. I don’t think Levon even knew that any overdubbing was taking place.”

  There were problems with the film as well. They had almost no footage of the actual event: the Thanksgiving feast, the orchestra, people dancing, the clowning around backstage. Bill Graham had refused to be interviewed—he was said to be angry that Robertson hadn’t properly thanked him for producing the lavish, labor-intensive show—and so was only barely credited in the film. Scorsese had watched the dress rehearsal with his thumb up his ass and neglected to shoot, the dummy. That was unfortunate, because some of the rehearsal was better than the concert. Neil Young had delivered a good version of “Helpless,” but performed with a good-size rock of cocaine stuck in his nostril. Neil’s manager saw this and said no way is Neil gonna be in the film like this. They had to go to special-effects people, who developed what they called a “traveling booger matte” that sanitized Neil’s nostril and put “Helpless” into the movie.

  I took Ronnie Hawkins with me to a screening of The Last Waltz just before its official release. All The Band was there, plus family, friends, people who’d worked on the project. For two hours we watched as the camera focused almost exclusively on Robbie Robertson, long and loving close-ups of his heavily made-up face and expensive haircut. The film was edited so it looked like Robbie was conducting the band with expansive waves of his guitar neck. The muscles on his neck stood out like cords when he sang so powerfully into his switched-off microphone. Hawk kept nudging me and laughing at this. Halfway through he whispered, “Was Richard still in the group when we did this?”

  Because there were almost no shots of Richard in the movie. And very little of Garth. Rick and I were better represented because we sang a lot. But where was Richard? In the interviews he was depicted prone on a sofa at Shangri-La, his hair wild and eyes shining like wet moons, looking like Che Guevara after the Bolivians got through with him. Garth looked like he wanted to be somewhere else. I was all but spitting in Scorsese’s face. Rick was a brooding presence under a leather hat, playing a track from his solo album instead of being interviewed.

  It was left to Robertson, the film’s producer, to tell its story, in which a band of brothers who’d been on the road for sixteen years—sometimes stealing food to survive a hellacious circuit of one-night stands in bucket-of-blood roadhouses owned by Jack Ruby—finally decided that “the road” was too dangerous an address to occupy any longer. “Sixteen years on the road, and the numbers start to scare you,” Robertson earnestly told Scorsese, his hooded eyes rimmed with kohl. “I couldn’t live with twenty years on the road. I couldn’t even discuss it.”

  The world-weary angst with which these and other lines were delivered was making Ronnie laugh. Hell, he’d been on the road twenty years and it hadn’t killed him. I’d nudge Ronnie to make him stop, and then Robertson would come out with something like, “Yeah, the road has taken many of the great ones: Hank Williams, Otis, Jimi, Janis, Elvis. It’s a goddamn impossible way of life.” The Hawk howled at that one. Fade to black and roll credits over “The Last Waltz Suite” as The Band shrinks to these little figures that eventually diminish to nothing on the screen.

  Silence in the screening room. I was in shock over how bad the movie was. Nine cameras on the floor, and there wasn’t even a shot of Richard Manuel singing the finale, “I Shall Be Released,” his trademark song. It turned out that of the nine cameras, only two were used in the movie. No film of Muddy Waters kissing me on the head, right onstage. Nothing showing how Garth Hudson led the band and inspired us all. It was mostly Robertson, showing off and acting like he was the king.

  The lights came up. I lit a cigarette and looked at Hawk, who pounded me on the back and loudly exclaimed, so everyone could hear: “Hey, son, don’t look so glum. The goddamn movie’d be awright if it only had a few more shots of Robbie. Haw haw haw haw haw!!!”

  So that’s the story of The Last Waltz. Predictably, the reviews were excellent for the movie, if not the album, which was judged to be more of the same from us. Critics called the movie the best and most sumptuous film ever made about a rock concert, and I suppose that’s true. But Warner Bros. charged the movie and record against advances we’d been paid, and to this day, despite a worldwide video release, we’ve never seen any money from the project. The Band never delivered any records to Warners, either, and eventually Shangri-La was shut down.

  Richard was still in his bungalow down by the beach when it came time to move out. I think they wanted to rent it out to defray some of the operating expenses of the place. But Richard liked it down there and didn’t want to leave. So they turned off his phone, then the gas. I went down to visit him and found him cooking minute steaks on an upside-down electric clothes iron. The thing was set on “cotton.” Richard would drop a pat of butter on the hot iron, slap on a steak, flip it over, drop another butter pat, and eat it right off the grill, so to speak. When they finally got him out of there it took them a couple of days to clean out the two thousand Grand Marnier bottles they found.

  Today people tell me all the time how much they loved The Last Waltz. I try to thank them politely and usually refrain from mentioning that for me it was a real scandal. Over the years we’ve heard people say that drugs affected the quality of the music and the film, and it would probably be hard to argue with that line of reasoning from any rational point of view. In hindsight, it was probably one of the reasons I was against the whole idea in the first place. If I was going to blame someone, I’d start with Robertson and Scorsese. I’ve certainly read interviews where they blamed themselves. They admitted that they got pretty far out there. You just can’t let things blow up in your head that big. None of us is as important as he wishes he was. New York, New York bombed when it was released, and Scorsese himself ended up in the hospital that September. His doctors told him to change his life or die.

  As for Robbie, he eventually got back with his family and pursued the movie career that he’d wanted badly enough to put The Band behind him. I want to be careful here not to deny Robbie’s contribution to all our careers. He was certainly a catalyst for what happened to The Band and deserves his place of honor in the history of our music. But to this day I don’t fully understand why he had to let go of it the way he did. Some of us were going through bad times, and it was a sin not to reach out and help them if you were able. Music is a special category to my way of looking. It’s sinful, the things that haven’t been done for certain artists over the years. To me it was unforgivable.

  I had a good reason for not inviting my new girlfriend, Sandra Dodd, to The Last Waltz. She was a part of my life I wanted to keep separate from the conflict and turmoil of that event. She was the one I turned to when the going got rough, and eventually...

  Let’s ask Sandy to remember those times for us:

  “I was raised and went to school in Virginia, where my dad had a construction company. I graduated from high school in ’67 and went to college in Florida. When the first Band records came out I really loved them, but never managed to see the group until they came to Washington with Bob Dylan in 1974. It was the first time I saw Levon. I heard his voice before I saw him, because I’d never seen a singing drumm
er and didn’t understand who was singing until I noticed the drummer kind of hidden behind his drums and a big Tiffany lamp they had onstage. I loved the way he kind of sang sideways, and he was also putting out more energy than anyone else onstage. The other guys seemed a little bored.

  “Then I moved to Lake Tahoe with some friends, and they knew Rusty Kershaw, who was making a record in L.A. with Neil Young called On the Beach. We all went down to L.A., and that’s where Levon and I met. Actually, I didn’t think he even noticed me that much. The next day I’m doing laps in the pool at the Sunset Marquis, and I get to the end of the lane and see this gorgeous pair of palomino cowboy boots.

  “It was Levon, smiling and looking down at me in the pool. He said he’d come to take me to get some sushi. I’d never eaten raw fish before. I guess I fell in love with him right then.

  “But I also got scared. I asked myself, Why does he want to go out with this little bumpkin from Virginia? So I didn’t let him pursue me. I went back up to Tahoe with my boyfriend, but couldn’t get Levon out of my mind. I’d write letters and bake cookies, and sent them to an address on the Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu: Shangri-La. And I didn’t really hear from him, except for a postcard with his phone number at the Miramar Hotel.

  “Next time I was in L.A. I called the number. Rick Danko answered. ‘Oh, yeah, Levon told me all about you. He’s not here right now, but come on over anyway because he’ll be right back.’ I asked where Levon was, and Rick said, ‘Ah, he’s out getting the children.’

  “I thought, Oh no. He didn’t say anything about having kids.

  “So I summoned all my courage and went over to the hotel. I went up to Levon’s apartment, but now Rick was gone. Instead there was this huge bearded man in cowboy boots splayed out all over the bed, and some kids running around. The man was Ronnie Hawkins, and the kids were Amy and Ezra. I was shy, so I sat in the chair closest to the door to wait and see if Levon would be back. So I’m sitting there, and Amy was figuring things out even though she was only five. She came up and whispered, ‘There’s a big, hairy monster right behind this curtain, and he’s going to get you if you don’t leave.’

  “Then Levon came back. He sat down next to me, took my hand, and I’ve been his woman ever since. I asked him if he was married, and he shook his head. ‘Hell, no!’ was all he said, and I was so relieved, because I was really falling for him. I mean, it hit me hard. Any woman’s who’s really fallen for a man will understand what I mean. I had to stay, so I checked into the Miramar, and my parents sent me a little money to live on. I was this twenty-six-year-old kid, but I felt something very powerful, and Levon was so sweet to me. He’s a gentleman of the old southern school who believes a woman shouldn’t want for anything if a man can help it.

  “But then his business was over in California, and he went back to Woodstock to work on the studio he was building in his barn. I went back to Virginia, but now we stayed in touch. This is winter of ’75–’76. He invited me to Woodstock, and I went to visit.

  “I went back to Virginia after that and was in a pretty bad car wreck. Levon came down to see me, and I think I knew then that I’d found the right man for me.

  “After The Last Waltz I came out to California and moved into the Miramar, where Levon was living while they were doing the interviews for the movie and getting the many business deals worked out. Libby found out about me, realized that Levon had a girlfriend, and immediately served support papers on him. He would get up in the morning, stuff wads of contracts and legal paper into a briefcase, and head downtown in his BMW to see the lawyers. At night we’d go up to Shangri-La, where the movie interviews were being filmed, and I think they were finishing an album as well.

  “Levon and I stayed together through this long, confusing time. Eventually many issues regarding the children couldn’t be worked out, there was a custody battle, and we all had to go to court and lay out our lives for the judge. Levon had always been very honest about not wanting to get married, of not wanting a wife to worry about, but now things changed. Both our mothers wanted to see us married to each other, and we wanted to affirm our bond to Amy so we wouldn’t be just ‘living together.’ So we got married on September 7, 1981, and here we still are today.”

  Chapter Ten

  THE NEXT WALTZ

  Allow me to rewind a bit.

  In November 1978 a thirty-three-year-old progressive congressman named Bill Clinton was elected governor of Arkansas. I think he was one of the youngest people ever to be governor. He’d worked for our senator William Fulbright, and had taught at the university’s law school. Before he got married he’d roomed with our old friend Paul Berry, who had embarked on his own career in banking.

  When it came time to choose a band to play Bill Clinton’s gubernatorial inaugural ball in January 1979, Paul suggested us. It turned out the governor was a Band fan, so it didn’t take a hell of a lot of prodding. That month, the Cate Brothers and I put a group together and played the “Diamonds & Denim Gala” in Little Rock. We met Bill and Hillary Clinton and helped our fellow Arkansawyers bring our new governor in with style. Bill Clinton was our governor for the next fourteen years, until it was time for him to move on in his career. But that’s when we first shook hands and said how ya doin’?

  Cut to February 1979, and I’m speeding out of Nashville in the back of a station wagon with actor Tommy Lee Jones and a fifth of Wild Turkey. We’re on our way to the location in Kentucky where director Michael Apted is about to begin production on Coal Miner’s Daughter, a biopic based on Loretta Lynn’s best-selling autobiography. Sissy Spacek is playing Loretta, Tommy Lee is her husband, Doolittle Lynn, and—I can still barely believe it—the part of Loretta’s father, Ted Webb, the coal miner of the title, is being played by me.

  The reason Tommy Lee and I are driving down together is because he’s supposed to teach me how to act during the ride. Believe it or not, that is the deal.

  After The Last Waltz was released the year before, The Band scattered. I was the only one still living in Woodstock. Rick and Elizabeth Danko stayed in Malibu, more or less keeping an eye on Richard Manuel. Garth lost his house in a Malibu brushfire that also claimed the homes of Neil Young and other friends. Garth lost some of his instruments in the fire, as well as most of Richard’s possessions, which had been stored in Garth’s basement. Garth and his wife, Maud, then moved to Agoura, on the other side of the mountains. Robertson was fending off film offers in the wake of his chiseled performance in our movie, and there were rumors he was going to produce and star in a movie about carnival life, something he’d always been interested in.

  I decided to remain in Woodstock. I loved the town and the people and the way of life too much to sell my house and relocate. Sandy and I would go down to Arkansas for a few months every year and rent a place, just to get away. ABC Records took the RCO All-Stars to Japan for a few weeks, and we sold out every hall we played. I knew I was going to love Japan when I noticed they had rice on their currency instead of emperors and statesmen. Farmers were almost revered. This was clearly a people who had their priorities straight.

  At airport customs this young officer walked me right into a booth and performed a major search of my luggage. After scrutinizing my passport like a jeweler, he said, “You may go.” I said, “Nice doin’ business with ya,” and left. I’m walking toward the exit, and a little girl in a khaki uniform comes and says, “Excuse me, Mr. Helm, may I search your boots?” I said “Yes, ma’am, of course,” and she found my pocketknife. But that was no problem, and after we passed through two more rings of security, including .50-caliber machine guns mounted on army jeeps, it was hard to even find a policeman in Japan. I was already in love with the food, but the landscape and the people made a huge impression as well. The audience in Osaka wouldn’t let us go until we’d played some Band songs, which sent them into rapture and made me sad we’d never gone over there to play before. But Japan in those days was terra incognita for rock and roll bands. Coming back through Haw
aii three weeks later, the U.S. customs officer said, “Mr. Helm, you’re not foolish enough to have any drugs on you, woudja?” And I said, “Buddy, after two weeks in Japan, you know I don’t have any drugs.” Because the country was dry as a bone.

  Also in 1978 I went down to Muscle Shoals Sound studios in Sheffield, Alabama, to cut my second album for ABC, produced by Duck Dunn. We used that famous Roger Hawkins-Barry Beckett rhythm section they had there, plus Steve Cropper on guitar and the Cate Brothers on vocals. This album, Levon Helm, was released late in 1978 but didn’t make the charts without a tour to back it up. I was wondering what the hell I was gonna do.

  That’s when I got the call that Michael Apted wanted me to read for Coal Miner’s Daughter.

  I think it happened because my friend Brad Dourif brought Tommy Lee Jones to a Band concert when they were working on a movie called The Eyes of Laura Mars. Tommy Lee was a Texas boy who had been to Harvard and knew acting cold, and he and I got along real well from the start. So when Michael Apted was in Nashville working on preproduction for the Loretta Lynn movie, Tommy Lee kind of threw my name in the hat when they started having trouble casting the part of Ted Webb. Apparently they couldn’t find anybody in Hollywood that was “country” enough for the role. So I was proposed, and I think Conway Twitty might’ve put in a word to Loretta for me. Apted screened The Last Waltz and then had one of his people call me up. I figured that acting and singing were part of the same ball game and actually had the temerity to show up.

  So I went to Nashville, and we sat in Apted’s office with the script. I immediately felt like a total fool. I’m reading Ted Webb’s part, and Michael’s reading Loretta’s part and calling me Daddy, and I’m calling him Loretta. I’m thinking, Why don’t they give this part to Brad? He’s the all-pro actor. My only acting experience had been in high school more than twenty years before, and I thought my reading sounded awkward and amateurish. In the end I just threw up my hands and had to laugh. Hell, I’d failed, but it was probably just a damn cameo anyway. Apted said thanks a lot, and I went back to Arkansas and told Sandy that I’d blown my “screen test.”