Bob Dylan and The Band are intertwined in rock and roll history, which is quite amazing when you think about what an odd pairing they seemed at the beginning of their time spent playing together. There was Dylan, the hipster superstar, hooking up with a largely unknown group of (mostly) Canadians. The band had been barnstorming their way through a parade of tiny U.S. venues. Yet their various collaborations—on stage, in the studio, and in an old pink Woodstock house—would forever alter music.
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Along the way, The Band would periodically dip into the Dylan songbook, usually with revelatory results. Here are five songs—some written solely by Dylan, others co-writes between one of the group’s members and him—that show off the indelible, magical chemistry between the Bard and The Band.
[RELATED: 5 Times Bob Dylan Baffled Us By Leaving Great Songs on the Cutting Room Floor]
1. ”Tears of Rage”
As Robbie Robertson was still developing his songwriting chops, The Band’s first album, Music from Big Pink (1968) featured a somewhat even split in the credits between Robertson, Richard Manuel, and Dylan, with whom the group had worked all through 1967 making what would become known as The Basement Tapes.
“Tears of Rage,” which opens the debut album, came from that time, and it features music by Manuel and lyrics by Dylan. There are wonderful versions available with Dylan on lead and The Band playing somberly behind him, but Manuel’s powerhouse vocal on The Band’s studio take is hard to deny. He moans with palpable pain while telling the story of a father/daughter relationship that’s gone perhaps too far astray for any chance of recovery.
2. “This Wheel’s on Fire”
In this case, it was Rick Danko, The Band’s bassist and another of its wonderful vocalists, that wrote the music from lyrics that Dylan had handed over. The Basement Tapes version is taken at a much slower tempo, causing Dylan’s mysterious lyrics to take on an air of foreboding.
Perhaps because the rest of Music from Big Pink was a bit ballad-heavy, The Band decided to speed things up on their version. They also left much of the musical heavy lifting in the hands of Garth Hudson, who utilized an army of keyboards (clavinet, organ, and a somewhat arcane instrument called a Rocksichord) to create drama, while Danko sang a frenzied lead vocal.
3. “I Shall Be Released”
This haunting ballad was written solely by Dylan. He did some lovely, restrained takes of the song with The Band in those Big Pink sessions. He also put out a folkier studio version in 1971, one that seemed to be an attempt to lessen the intensity of previous versions. But once again, it was near impossible for any singer to put a definitive stamp on a song once Richard Manuel got a hold of it.
Manuel scrapes the ether for some of the high notes that he hits in the take that would serve as the closing song on Music from Big Pink. Add in some icy piano notes, and the slow march played by drummer Levon Helm, and this version eerily captures Dylan’s lyrics about an imprisoned man’s restless yearning to finally be free.
4. “When I Paint My Masterpiece”
The Band were running on fumes by the time they released their fourth album, Cahoots, in 1971. The album betrays the fatigue of the non-stop recording and touring cycle they’d been enduring for about a decade. But they rose to the occasion with a stellar performance of “When I Paint My Masterpiece,” a song Dylan wrote and would also record himself on several different occasions.
The song tells a witty yet bittersweet tale of a weary traveler longing for the comforts of his American home. With Levon Helm playing the mandolin and Garth Hudson pumping away on the accordion, the song certainly captures an Old World European vibe. And no one on Earth could ever sing the line Oh, to be back in the land of Coca-Cola quite like Helm did.
5. “Blind Willie McTell”
A full 17 years after The Last Waltz, with Richard Manuel deceased and Robbie Robertson no longer a member, The Band returned with the 1993 album Jericho, featuring Helm, Danko, and Hudson supported by musicians with whom they had been recently playing.
Two years earlier, Dylan had released the first of his Bootleg Series collections of previously unreleased material, and one of the revelations was “Blind McTell,” a stunningly evocative rendering of the American South over many generations that Dylan for some reason thought unfit for his 1983 album Infidels. The Band took up the gauntlet, with Helm doing wonders on the mandolin while trading off the vocals with Danko, while Hudson lurks in the background with his keyboards and horns. It was just one more bit of evidence that nobody ever covered Dylan quite like The Band.
Photo by Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
