MMUSICMAG.COM
MAY 2012 ISSUE
BEHIND THE CLASSICS
WRITTEN BY: ROBBIE ROBERTSON
RECORDED: MAY 1969, LOS ANGELES
PRODUCED BY: THE BAND AND JOHN SIMON
RICK DANKO: BASS, VIOLIN, VOCALS
LEVON HELM: LEAD VOCALS, DRUMS
GARTH HUDSON: MELODICA, TRUMPET
RICHARD MANUEL: PIANO, VOCALS
ROBBIE ROBERTSON: GUITAR
Barry Feinstein
FROM THE ALBUM: THE BAND (1969)
Levon Helm, Rick Danko, Robbie Robertson, Richard Manuel, Garth Hudson
“The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down”
THE BAND
The Band formed in the early 1960s as the
backing group for rockabilly singer Ronnie
Hawkins. All the members were from
Ontario, Canada, save for one: drummer
Levon Helm, who had relocated to that area
along with fellow Arkansas native Hawkins.
As the group split from Hawkins to perform
and record with Bob Dylan and eventually
begin a career as a standalone act, guitarist
Robbie Robertson developed into a master
songwriter—and Helm’s Southern heritage
became a favorite well of inspiration.
In 1968, Robertson had just become a
father for the first time. The presence of his
baby daughter Alexandra meant the rock ’n’
roller in the house had to keep quiet, which
left Robertson composing on piano rather
than his usual guitar. One day he came up
with a chord sequence while daughter was
asleep, and returned to it endlessly for the
next eight months—but lyrics stubbornly
eluded him. “I’d sit down at the piano and
play these chords over and over again,” he
said. “And then one day the rest of it came to
me. Sometimes you have to wait a song out.”
The words that at last came to Robertson
were written from the point of view of an
American Southerner at the end of the Civil
War. Armed with library books recommended
to him by Helm, Robertson painted a fictional
picture in a historical frame. In the months
following the war’s end, a Tennessean named
Virgil Caine reflects upon the devastation it
has wrought upon his life. His community
has been destroyed by the scorched-earth
tactics of Union Gen. George Stoneman,
and his 18-year-old brother has been killed
by a Yankee soldier. Robertson tweaked the
lyrics upon the advice of Helm, who asked
that an approving verse about Pres. Abraham
Lincoln be excised and that a reference to
Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee—who,
he noted, personally opposed slavery and
secession—be rendered “with all due respect.”
Robertson finished up the song
during a writing trip to Hawaii just before
the sessions for the Band’s second album
were to begin. Following the success of
1968’s Music From Big Pink, the group
elected to record in L.A. rather than its home
base of Woodstock, N.Y. Their tour manager
arranged to rent a Sunset Plaza Drive home
once owned by Sammy Davis Jr. The group
set up an ad hoc recording studio in the
cavernous pool house, installing an eighttrack 3M tape machine. “We boxed in some
of the windows and taped down the metal
fireplace so it wouldn’t rattle,” Helm recalled.
“The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down”
was among nine songs the Band whipped
out in succession there, learning each during
the afternoon and evening before recording
the next morning. For “Dixie” the group laid
down the basic track with Helm singing
while he played drums. “That wasn’t easy,
but Levon had been doing it live,” recalled
producer John Simon, “so he’d make way for
his vocal and support it as opposed to being
a bashy drummer who’d cause drum leakage
getting into the vocal microphone.“ Most of the
members were multi-instrumentalists, allowing
for carefully deployed melodic touches like a
violin part from bass player Rick Danko and
a trumpet line by keyboardist Garth Hudson.
The song was never a hit for the Band,
but reached No. 3 in a 1971 cover by Joan
Baez. The version played at the farewell
performance by the group’s original lineup,
held Nov. 25, 1976, in San Francisco, was
“maybe the best live performance of this song
we ever gave,” Helm said. From that night
through his death in April 2012 at age 71, he
never sang it onstage again.
–Chris Neal
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