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GOODBYE GARTH
Riding high: Lotti Golden during the cover session for
Motor-Cycle
, NYC, February 12, 1969
STEPHEN PALEY/MICHAEL OCHS ARCHIVES/GETTY IMAGES
How ironic it is that while I’ve been reading the Uncut cover story about The Band’s 30 best songs [Take 335], news comes of the passing of the last surviving original member, Garth Hudson. What a musical genius, overshadowed at first in the group because he didn’t sing or write the songs, but without whom they would not have been nearly as good, nor would their music have been as timeless. I grew up in New York’s Mid-Hudson Valley, not far from Woodstock where they lived, where my parents had a pharmacy. One day in the early ’70s I came in and my father asked if I recognised the name on a prescription. Indeed I did, it was one of The Band! I looked up, and there was Garth at a cash register paying for an ice cream.
Thank you for putting the archives online, going back to Take 1 [available as part of our Uncut+ subscription]. The format may have changed a bit since then, but the writing and topics covered are still tops. I hope I’m around long enough to read all issues from before I became a subscriber in the early 2000s.