by Levon Helm
Three days later they called and said I had the part. I put down the phone, and Sandy said, “Lee, who was it?”
I said, “Honey, I feel like I’ve just rolled a pair of sevens!”
I was flattered as hell. If I’d had to sing or dance, I don’t know if I could’ve done it, but the part was such an honorable one. This man had labored in the mines for his family, and growing up in the cotton fields, I knew what it was like to bend over and sweat when you work. I felt that I knew what it was to work for the company store. I was also so scared of blowing it that I got real ambitious and researched the part until I felt I could be Ted Webb. I went up to Kentucky and met Loretta and her family. I talked to “Moonie,” Loretta’s husband, about Ted, studied photographs, and spent time with his son Herman Webb, Loretta’s brother, and tried to pick up on Herman’s ways a little. My main concern was getting it so that it didn’t irritate the family, that it would seem realistic to them. They were my most important audience. In the end it wasn’t a big transition because I’ve been around people like the Webbs all my life. Loretta’s parents were a little like mine. I knew that families like ours made up in love for one another what they might have lacked in material things. That was the feeling I wanted to create. Add the basic formality to people that makes life in the South a bit more pleasant, and that was the character.
That, plus the mines. Michael Apted arranged for me to spend a few days in a coal mine to see what it was like. They got out the obsolete brass dodgers and other old tools. I talked to the miners and their families to see what their lives were like. And I was real impressed. To be down there day after day takes a certain kind of nerve that I don’t have. We shot the mine parts of the film in a real mine, no props, and I was a little spooked by the claustrophobic conditions. Hang out in a coal mine for a couple of days, and you realize how strong these people have to be to survive.
So we’re driving to the location, and Tommy Lee is giving me the Jones crash course in acting.
“Levon, the most important thing you got to remember is, never look at the camera. It doesn’t exist. Forget about it. You know your lines [the cast had already sat down in Nashville and read through the script a couple of times], and Michael is gonna walk you through your scenes until you’re comfortable.
“Next, don’t move too quickly. There’s a rhythm, and you find it and plug into it. Don’t talk too fast either. You have to exaggerate your emotions to get your point across, but not too much. Let the director be the coach, and then do it your own way, and you’re gonna be great, man. Cause everyone’s excited about working with you. We’re all tickled you got that part.”
As the level on the Wild Turkey fell, Tommy continued to educate me about how to be on a movie set, how to deal with the assistant directors, the property masters, who to listen to, and who to watch out for. When we stopped at a little grocery in Kentucky, Tommy Lee started getting into it with the teamster who was driving us. I noticed the other customers were miners whose blue-gray eyes peered out of faces covered in coal dust. They were looking kinda funny at Tommy Lee, and I whispered, “Let’s get outta here now.”
Tommy thanked me the next day for saving him from himself. And by the time we pulled into the Suburban Motel in Whitesburg, Kentucky, Tommy Lee had managed to turn me into the beginnings of a movie actor.
They took me out to the location, and it was like going back in time. The film crew had rebuilt Butcher Hollow, Loretta’s hometown, completely, down to the number of corncribs behind the houses. Ted Webb’s house was re-created from old photos, but without the back porch and wall so the camera could come in. When the girls—Loretta and her sister—came in, they looked around and said, “No. . . no. . . out. . . that goes. . .” because the set designer had started out a little too fancy. Ted Webb didn’t own no brass bed. But eventually they got it accurate, down to the old newspapers lining the walls to keep out the cold.
We started work late in February and filmed for about six weeks, until old Ted Webb passes away. You had someone combing your hair, getting you dressed, telling you what you had to do, so it wasn’t any real problem. They had a terrific team of actors, and all of them helped pull me through. I even helped choreograph a scene where Tommy picks Sissy up and sashays her through the screen door after I give them my blessing to marry. It was a pretty nice dance move they did. Michael Apted was terrific. There was a difficult scene where I had to beat Sissy with a switch for staying out too late with Tommy Lee, a scene that seemed beyond my abilities at that time. I had to grab her and bring that switch down hard on her dress, and Sissy was so adorable that all the crew were scowling at me while I tried to play this right.
“Cut! OK, we’ll do it again.” And Michael would come over and say, in his veddy British voice, “It looks good, but if only you’d try it a little slower and mean it more. D’yew know what I mean?”
He actually made it fun for me to try to pull it off. He let us actors change words around a little to suit the way we spoke, and gave us enough slack to make something up. On the last take I brought that switch down like a whip and then broke it over my knee. I stomped through the door, like the scene called for, and the whole crew was making faces at me and whispering, “Booooo!” “Bully!” “Brute!” But it was a take.
I was sad when my character died and my part of the movie was over. I didn’t really want to get into the coffin for the big wake scene, but I also didn’t want to be thought of as superstitious or “difficult.” So I told Michael Apted he’d have to get in first to show me how to look. So he kind of warmed the thing up for me, good sport that he is. As the “mourners” gathered around to sing “Amazing Grace,” I had to sit bolt upright. It was like coming back to life.
“Cut!”
“It’s my funeral,” I told them, “and if you’re gonna sing ‘Amazing Grace,’ it’s gotta be the old-fashioned, traditional way.” And I taught ’em in my dead man’s makeup how to do it shape-note style like they would’ve back in the holler in those days. Some of the ladies they’d hired as extras turned out to be church choir singers, so once we got it off the ground it didn’t sound too bad. We rehearsed it a few times, then I got back in the coffin, and we shot the scene.
They wanted me to cut a version of Bill Monroe’s “Blue Moon of Kentucky” for the movie sound track, and I had to swallow hard on that one and ask the producer how he’d like to follow the Blue Grass Boys and Elvis Presley. But I went into Bradley’s Barn Studios in Nashville with the Cate Brothers and Fred Carter, Jr., and after we did “Blue Moon” we figured why not put a little hay in the barn, so we cut twenty more tracks. Around the time Coal Miner’s Daughter came out in 1980, MCA (which had gobbled up ABC) released ten of these under the title American Son.
Coal Miner’s Daughter was a hit movie, and I got surprisingly good reviews. There was buzz of a possible Best Supporting Actor nomination by the Academy, but of course none was forthcoming. But I did manage to throw a scare into a few people all the same. I was and remain terminally modest about my acting abilities, but after that quite a few movie offers started to come my way, and for the next decade I took as many as seemed interesting. If there was a part for a country-type hick, I had a good shot at it. (And Playboy went and wrote that Levon Helm and Dolly Parton were the three best things to hit Hollywood that year.)
Five years after The Last Waltz I began to really miss The Band. I needed to be out playing music, so I teamed up with the Cate Brothers and went on the road, starting in Canada and then heading down to the States, where we played in theaters. The Cates, with my nephew Terry Cagle on drums, would open with a few of their own hits—“In One Eye and out the Other,” the ballad “Let It Slide”—and Ernie’s great vocals and Earl’s sizzling guitar would get everyone warmed up. I’d show up halfway through and get that double-drum attack going on things like “Milk Cow Boogie,” “Summertime Blues,” “Willie and the Hand Jive,” and “Bring It On Home.” At first we relied on Band material, but eventually we were doin
g only “The Weight,” which the customers basically demanded to hear, and “Evangeline,” familiar to our fans from the movie (and I got to play mandolin). I was more comfortable doing the American blues numbers I’d grown up with—Sonny Boy, Muddy—and the old rock and roll songs like “Short Fat Fannie.”
In 1982 I made an album for Capitol at Muscle Shoals and went on the road that spring playing clubs with the Muscle Shoals All-Stars. We’d get that jungle thing happening with “Willie and the Hand Jive,” and people would just dance. Rick Danko was restless too and went out as a duo with Paul Butterfield.
A few months later Rick came back to Woodstock to sell his house. We ran into each other outside Judge Forno’s Colonial Pharmacy on Mill Hill Road, and suddenly we realized we had to play music together. Rick is one of these people who is just so musical that he makes anyone who plays with him look good and feel better. Then Rick looked around and realized that Woodstock had shed its posthippie aura and had settled back into the quiet Catskill artists’ colony it had been for the sixty-nine years prior to the Woodstock Festival. He called Elizabeth in California and told her to pack up the kids and come on home. In early 1983 Rick and I did a club and college tour as an acoustic duo, playing a few Band songs (on the theory that sometimes less is more) and “Caledonia,” with Rick on guitar and me on harp and everyone in the house clapping along as the rhythm section. We sold out the Ritz in New York City and got booked into the Lone Star Café, one of our favorite places to play.
At five o’clock on a February evening Rick and I were doing our soundcheck when Bob Dylan strolled in wearing a cashmere coat and a big fur hat. He was between tours and said he was just hanging out in the Village when he heard we were playing. He said, “Whatcha playin’ tonight?” and I told him we liked to open with “Don’t Ya Tell Henry,” one of his songs. He borrowed one of Rick’s guitars, I picked up the mandolin, and we played some old tunes together. He stayed until about nine o’clock, then disappeared.
Two hours later Rick and I were into “Short Fat Fannie,” the ninth song of our set, when we got word that Bob was hanging around the bar. Rick called him up to the stage, he took off his hat, and was handed a guitar. And amid the pandemonium of the packed house we played a rather liquid “Your Cheatin’ Heart” before launching into a funny medley of “Hand Jive” and “Ain’t No More Cane.”
We had a few laughs and a beer in the dressing room after the show, and then Bob was out the door, into the night. It would be a few years until we saw him again.
Muddy Waters died that year.
My film career was active enough in those days. I worked on the CBS series Seven Brides for Seven Brothers and played the part of Major Jack Ridley, General Chuck Yeager’s sidekick in The Right Stuff. One night at the film’s desert location, I winked at Sam Shepard, who was playing General Yeager, and the two of us kind of drifted off into the shadows, where I lit a joint one of the crew had laid on me. Out of nowhere General Yeager himself walked over and said, “What are you boys doing, smokin’ pot?”
“Well, General,” I said, eager to change the subject, “I know you like to fish, but did you ever do any catfish doggin’ down in Arkansas?” Chuck Yeager just laughed at us and shook his head.
I’d usually try to see Richard when I was in California. He had stopped drinking in 1978, entered a detox program, and had been dry for several years. He seemed to be recovering from the behavior that had hurt him, and always would say something about getting The Band back together. “I thought we were just gonna take a vacation,” he said. “I never wanted to put The Band into some kind of time capsule. Let’s get back out on the road.”
Well, that was always my intention, especially since I’d seen how much the Japanese loved our music. I figured we still had some frontiers to conquer. Garth was busy working with a new band, the Call, and became an iconic presence on the new cable channel MTV, when the Call video “The Walls Came Down,” featuring Garth’s blistering synthesizer solo, went into heavy rotation. Robbie Robertson was working in Hollywood as musical director on Martin Scorsese pictures like The King of Comedy. When we re-formed The Band that summer, I said, “Let’s not invite him,” but I think Rick did call Robbie, and he passed. He told Rick he was afraid when we did The Last Waltz that people would think it was one of those phony show-biz retirements and that we’d be back with the Big Comeback someday, and he just didn’t want to do that.
But Richard told us he was gonna go nuts if we didn’t do something, and Rick and I... well, we never had it any different. Being on the road was our way of life, and we thought we should embrace it instead of running from it. As usual, Garth was the key. If he wasn’t willing, it wouldn’t happen. He was the one who made the rest of us sound a little more schooled, a little more polished. Yes, he grumbled about touring, but it was in his blood too, and eventually he said yes.
The question had always been who would replace Robertson if The Band got back together. My vote went to Earl Cate, whose skills and good taste with the Fender Telecaster were unmatched in my opinion. But the Cate Brothers Band was a family affair in more ways than one, and it came down to not wanting to break them up. There was also a brilliant young guitarist in Woodstock, Jimmy Weider, whom we’d known for years and all wanted to play with. So we hired Jimmy.
We called Harold Kudlets up in Hamilton, Ontario, and told him to book a tour of Canada for us. Then, so I wouldn’t have to actually rehearse, we hired three of the Cate Brothers Band and put The Band on the road as an eight-piece group.
“Jeezus, Levon!” the Colonel exclaimed over the phone when I told him about this. “You’re telling me that you’re replacing Robbie with a quartet?”
We debuted in Toronto in early July, selling out all six thousand seats. Then we swung around Canada, with the Cates opening by themselves before being joined by the four of us: Me, Garth, Rick, and Richard, who was older, a bit wiser, and in pretty damn good form. His falsetto singing on “I Shall Be Released” was incredibly moving, and “You Don’t Know Me,” performed as a tribute to Ray Charles, usually brought down the house. We did “Cripple Creek” and “Mystery Train,” and we could see that feelings ran high out in the audience. People sang along with these songs like they were old friends, and I think it was Richard who said to me after one show, “Levon, do you realize we have become these songs?”
I knew what he meant, even if I didn’t feel that comfortable with the idea.
People would always ask about Robertson, and Rick or I would explain that all of us were here because we wanted to be. If it doesn’t come from your heart, music just doesn’t work. Robertson was the only one who ever came out and said he wanted to hang it up. The most important thing was that the four of us were proud of the show. It was fresh. Garth was finding new sounds and playing the best of his life.
On July 21, 1983, in San Jose, we made our first U.S. appearance as The Band since The Last Waltz. We always felt good about playing the Bay Area, where we had been reborn as The Band, and did a couple of more shows and played the New York Folk Festival before taking the thing to Japan at the end of the month.
We sold out four shows in Tokyo, two in Osaka, and other towns like Nagoya and Sapporo. And I mean the Japanese kids poured enthusiasm all over us like we were part of their folklore. I thought things were going pretty good, and we were so impressed by how together the Japanese seemed to be. One night Richard told me, “Levon, these people have so much respect for each other it makes me ashamed to be Western.” There was actually a lot of tension because the Russians had just shot down the Korean airliner in the Sea of Japan, and people were pretty spooked.
We played theaters and clubs during the fall of 1983, and did a gig with the Grateful Dead at the Carrier Dome in Syracuse on October 22 before thirty-three thousand fans. We were pretty relieved that the press continued to be on our side. “The Band has context,” one of the local papers said after the show. “Their music sounded as deep as the Old Testament. If one of the great, noble s
tone faces at Mount Rushmore grew a heart, opened its eyes, and began to sing, the voice would have to be that of Levon Helm.” After a couple of sell-out shows at the Beacon Theater on upper Broadway in Manhattan, Rolling Stone wrote, “Perhaps most thrilling was the performance of the enigmatic, heartbreak-voiced Richard Manuel. Dark, handsome, and healthy-looking, Manuel romped through ‘The Shape I’m In’ and delivered the concert’s high point, a tender rendition of ‘You Don’t Know Me.’”
Film roles kept coming my way. If Hollywood needed a sheriff or father figure, sometimes I got the call. In 1984 I played opposite Jane Fonda in an ABC movie called The Dollmaker. We filmed a dope smuggler movie called The Best Revenge in southern Spain for a Canadian outfit; another project called Smooth Talk, with Laura Dern and Treat Williams; and I played a southern sheriff in a chase picture, The Man Outside, which was shot in Arkansas and had other members of The Band in cameos. Things were going pretty good. Then in the spring of 1984 the agent called and said they wanted me to play a U.S. marshal in a western based on Willie Nelson’s Red Headed Stranger. The script called for a couple of gun duels, so I went out back of my barn practicing quick-draw techniques with a .22 reproduction of a Colt .45 in a western-style holster.
Well, it ain’t easy to come out and say I shot myself in the ass with it, but that’s pretty much what happened. The gun went off in the holster, and I felt a searing pain as the bullet burrowed right behind my kneecap. First thing I thought was: That’s the leg you hit the bass drum with! Second thing: Levon, you’ve really done it this time.
