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TEARS OF RAGE, TEARS OF GRIEF
How sad the news of Robbie Robertson’s death was. However, the Uncut tribute to him was respectful without glossing over some of his complex character. The Band have left us, as you say, so much music that lives on, his intention as the main composer. Van Morrison’s friendship with him was new to me.
It reminded me that I discovered the wonder of their early albums on the same day. I was living in London in the late ’60s/early ’70s and had a friend, Roddy Cameron, a fine musician, who recommended in the latter part of 1968 that I have a listen to two recent albums – Music From Big Pink and Astral Weeks. I went soon after to stay for a few days with a friend in Wales where I bought both albums in Swansea, without having listened to either. Thank you, Roddy, wherever you are, for that introduction to artists whose music that has meant so much to me ever since that very first listening in a flat overlooking the sea on the Gower.
I was then lucky – no, privileged – to see The Band in London twice in the early ’70s. The first was at the Albert Hall, sitting quite high up and simply lost in the music. The second was in 1974 at Wembley on the same bill as some other pretty decent musicians, Joni Mitchell and CSNY. A day that you look back on and think, ‘Did that really happen?’ It was like a prayer answered. Finally in the memory drawer and bringing together Robbie and Van again are a few nights drinking a little too much homemade barley wine with a brother-in-law, listening over and over again to “4% Pantomime”. Thank you, Uncut, for your treatment of his passing… and thank you to Richard, Rick, Levon and Garth for all you did. It’s hard for me to think of him without thinking of you. I am playing …Big Pink as I write.