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This Wheel's on Fire

Levon Helm and the Story of the Band
Jun 25, 2015MICHAEL TAGGART MALONEY rated this title 5 out of 5 stars
THIS WHEEL'S ON FIRE is a tremendous memoir. The first half, up until the point where Levon ditches the rest of The Hawks who are backing Dylan on his historic first electric tour, is all good cheer and high times. And that continues through Helm's return to the boys in 1967 at Big Pink in West Saugerties to work on some of THE BASEMENT TAPES and then on to MUSIC FROM BIG PINK (1968) and THE BROWN ALBUM (1969), culminating in their appearance on Ed Sullivan, which is pretty much the zenith. It's downhill from there. Money and drugs (heroin, cocaine, pills) and women and bad feelings over Robbie Robertson monopolizing most of the writing credit take over the book's narrative. Only 15 or 20 pages from the end (Richard Manuel had already hanged himself) I suddenly felt catatonic. It was as if I had been drinking bottle after bottle of Grand Marnier and eating minute steaks cooked on an upturned electric iron, which Richard Manuel was said to have done in the days when he was living on Zuma Beach in Malibu at The Band's Shangri-La Studios. I couldn't fall asleep I was so disturbed and agitated. Here is a taste of what Levon, who died the spring of 2012, had to say about the early passing of The Band's bassist, Rick Danko: "I know he's in a better place and all that bullshit. My beef is that he didn't have to be there yet -- not at only fifty-six years old. Rick worked too hard. He wasn't that old and he wasn't that sick. He just worked himself to death. And the reason Rick had to work all the time was because he'd been fucked out of his money. People ask me about THE LAST WALTZ all the time. Rick Danko dying at fifty-six is what I think about THE LAST WALTZ. It was the biggest fuckin' rip-off that ever happened to The Band -- without a doubt. We held a big funeral for Rick, a hell of a thing. The Traums played, John Sebastian, other friends. I sat there with my daughter, kind of stunned, not really believing it was happening or that I was there. Robertson came from California; he didn't want to be here, but knew he had to be. He got up and spouted off a lot of self-serving tripe about how great Rick had sung the songs that he -- Robertson -- had written. It made me sick to hear. Then he worked the press a little, like a good Hollywood boy, and went back to Los Angeles. He knows he's got Rick Danko's money in his pocket. He knows that."