The News Herald (Willoughby, OH)
Robbie Robertson on The Band’s ‘Stage Fright’ boxed set
The Band, in its original form, finished in 1977, and then for good in 1999.
But the music that started from Big Pink has endured — and surfaces again this week with an expanded box set reissue of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame troupe’s third album, “Stage Fright,” from 1970.
The Band’s story is wellknown, of course — starting as Canadian rocker Ronnie Hawkins’ Hawks during the early 60s, then joining Bob Dylan for his new “electric” era in 1965 Settling to record with Dylan in Woodstock, N.Y., the quintet established its own identity, starting with 1968’s iconic “Music From Big Pink” and continuing for six more studio albums before finishing with “The Last Waltz” concert on Thanksgiving Day of 1976. The Band, without guitarist and chief songwriter Robbie Robertson, reformed in 1993 for three more albums.
Only Robertson — who’s gone on to a solo work and an active film scoring career, primarily for Martin Scorsese — and keyboardist Garth Hudson remain from the original lineup. Robertson, 77, has taken the lead in compiling the box sets, and he says by phone from Los Angeles that he is “particularly happy” to have another crack at “Stage Fright,” — featuring a new song sequence, outtakes and demos and a full live concert from London’s Royal Albert Hall during June of 1971 — for a number of reasons...
Q: What did you want to do with this new edition of “Stage Fright?”
A: I was never satisfied with the mixes. It always felt incomplete to me. As much as anybody I love original mixes and the way it was and all of that stuff, but being able to hear this music without the technical limitations of the time, without the hiss, and to go back to the original running order and then, on top of that, to pull out this Albert Hall concert...Being able to revisit that and do it the way that I wanted to do it in the beginning was an incredible sense of fulfillment on this record. I’m on a high.
Q: The sequence is very interesting. The new version, for the most part, positions the original Side Two at the front of the album. What’s the story there?
A: At that time I was trying too hard to get the other guys to be write and some people don’t, and that’s just the way it is. I was trying to stuff something down somebody’s throat, and it didn’t make them feel good. So we recorded the album and I made up the sequence that’s on the album now, and the other guys said, “Well, all the (stuff) that you were wanting us to do, you’ve got it buried in the sequence!” So I ended up resequencing it for all the wrong reasons, and it wasn’t the best thing for the record at all. But, like I said, I was so trying to encourage them, and sometimes you do the right thing for the wrong reason.
Qpart of the songwriting.
I wanted everybody to write — that was the original idea with this group, : How does the new that we would all write sequence make “Stage and all do this and all do Fright” different, then? that. That that had faded
A away, and I was really : I think when you trying to restore that. I put it in this sequence couldn’t get it through my it takes you to the place thick skull that some people that this record was made to be. It’s the journey. It’s the truth in this record. We were unsettled. There were guys in the group experimenting with drugs, hard drugs, and it was really getting in the way of the work. It was difficult; When we got in there and we sat down to play, the magic happened, but in-between it was difficult. Everybody would wander off, and it was like, “Whoa, hey, guys — come back. Come back!” And that came out in the songwriting this time — “Stage Fright,” “The Shape I’m In,” you can hear it. I didn’t mean for it, to, but I couldn’t help it.
Q
: You recorded “Stage Fright” at the Woodstock Playhouse. It was intended to be in front of an audience, right?