Capturing Helm’s appeal

Thank you so much for Joel Selvin’s tribute to Levon Helm and his descriptions of The Band’s history (“Levon Helm rocked with honest soul,” Saturday). Every word of it is perfect. He’s a wonderful writer and I guess he must have felt as I have for the past 40-plus years.

For all the Dylan and Baez songs that I loved and sang along with, that marvelous poetry of love and justice — particularly Dylan’s — that shaped my generation’s cynical but hopeful take on life in America and my own choice of career and personal code, it’s only the album cover of “Music From Big Pink” that I still see as clearly in my mind’s eye as if I were still in my 20s, and my jaw still drops in amazement at their genius. It’s the only CD I’ve bought twice after wearing one out in my cars and now my truck.

I have found it impossible to describe to my kids the core of The Band’s appeal to me and of Levon’s plaintive and wavering, but somehow strong, singing. They are from such different musical and philosophical planets that it’s astounding, but I’m going to give it a go with Selvin’s piece. They’ll most likely scratch their heads when they read it, but what the hell. I will say that the 11-year-old does kind of get it; she loves “Up on Cripple Creek.” It’s a start. If they ever feel “The Weight,” that will bode well for their own generation, or at least for them.

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Thank you for the wonderful tribute to the great Levon Helm in today’s Chronicle. It was really beautiful.

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Thank you so much for the appreciation article on Helm (and The Band). The article said the group “emerged on the rock scene in 1969.”

Just as the summer of 1969 will always be to me the summer of Crosby, Stills & Nash’s first album, the summer of 1968 was the summer of music from Big Pink, as their first album came out to critical acclaim and widespread radio play in July of that year. The Band was always near and dear to me, in no small part because our light show, Little Princess 109, did the lights at their historic debut at Winterland in April 1969.