When music fans think about the collaboration between Bob Dylan and The Band, their thoughts might drift back to the famous tours of 1965 and 1966, when they rewrote the rules of rock and roll to the dismay of Dylan’s folk-purist fans. Or they might think of the era around 1967 and ’68, when they retreated from the spotlight to Woodstock to make some publishing demos. Those tapes would gain an aura of mystery and wonder when they became the first widely collected bootlegs in rock history. (They were eventually being released as The Basement Tapes years after the fact.)
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But who remembers the fact that Dylan and The Band recorded just one studio album together? In November 1973, they quickly churned through a bunch of Dylan originals to create the album Planet Waves, which was released in 1974. That album would be overshadowed somewhat by a massive tour that the artists undertook. Let’s look back to when Dylan and The Band renewed musical acquaintances for an album that’s somewhat unfairly overlooked today.
From Woodstock to the West Coast
Dylan relocated to California at the beginning of the ’70s after the atmosphere in Woodstock, New York, had become stifling for him. He also signed with Asylum Records, the newly created label of entrepreneur David Geffen. Dylan convinced his buddies in The Band to relocate there as well.
Since they had last worked together during those informal Woodstock sessions, fortunes had changed. Back then, Dylan was the mega-superstar and The Band were the unknowns. But Dylan had faltered somewhat at the turn of the decade, with his enthusiasm for his music taking a back seat to tending to his family. The Band, meanwhile, had taken the rock world by storm with a series of highly acclaimed albums that made them the darlings of both rock critics and famous musicians like Eric Clapton and George Harrison.
But The Band were running on fumes by the time 1973 rolled around, as a relentless pace and the excess of group members had taken their toll. Changing their environment and reuniting with their buddy Dylan must have seemed like a nice way to reset. They agreed to record an album and then go out on tour together.
A Planet of Attack
Once all six men got back together in the studio, their ease with each other showed in terms of how quickly they recorded an album’s worth of material. In the Howard Sounes’ biography Down the Highway: The Life of Bob Dylan, The Band’s Garth Hudson talked about how the record was made: “We all loved the way Bob wanted to really sing [the songs] once a day, one rendition a day. So we’d often get the song on the second take. I think there may have been some first takes there. Best way to do ’em.”
In many respects, Planet Waves, named as a nod to Dylan’s astrological beliefs, captured some of the loose-limbed feel of the music that the artists had made together back in Woodstock. Songs like “On a Night Like This,” “You Angel You,” and “Tough Mama” flow along in an easy breeze, the sound of men making music with no pressure to do anything other than put smiles on faces.
But Planet Waves also contains hints of the visionary Dylan starting to come back to the scene. The heartbreak songs “Going, Going, Gone” and “Dirge” sound like test runs for Blood on the Tracks, which would be the next album up in the Dylan lineup. “Dirge” is especially harrowing, with Dylan howling out his lyrics while Robbie Robertson adds pointed acoustic guitar fills.
The song from Planet Waves that’s held the most staying power is “Forever Young,” and we mean the ballad version and not the country rock take that also shows up on the album. The slower version of the song features Dylan’s tender, vulnerable singing in perfect harmony with The Band’s playing, especially Garth Hudson’s bed of keyboards and Levon Helm’s evocative mandolin.
And Then the Tour
Planet Waves got a bit lost in the hype of Tour ’74, a massive jaunt across the U.S. taken by Dylan and The Band. Playing stadiums and big arenas, the artists set the template for all large-scale rock tours to come. Oddly enough, they would play with wild, manic intensity in those shows, nothing like the subtle underplaying found on the album they had just made.
Only two years later, The Band would say goodbye with The Last Waltz, and Dylan would help them shut out the lights with a version of “Forever Young” during that concert. They had set so many precedents and had been at the center of so much music history during the decade or so that they (sporadically) worked together. But never forget Planet Waves, the lone, official studio album to come from this one-of-a-kind alliance.
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Photo by Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
