Bob Dylan And The Band: Down In The Flood (2012) - Trailer (Documentary, Music) - video Dailymotion

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Documentary / Music (2012) 114 minutes ~ Color ~ 2 Vols.    This documentary traces the potent working relationship between Bob Dylan and the members of the rock group The Band who made some iconic music during the sixties and seventies.     Stars: The Band, Bob Dylan

Transcript

00:00After the release of Nashville Skyline, Dylan took the first steps towards resuming live

00:04performance and it was the band to whom he once again turned. Though they'd briefly appeared on

00:10stage together at a Woody Guthrie tribute concert in January 68, a booking to play the Isle of

00:15White festival in August 1969 would be the first time that Dylan and the band had played a full

00:20set in over three years. The festival and the reappearance of Bob Dylan was a hugely anticipated

00:26event. The Dylan that showed up at the Isle of White, he was straight off the cover of Nashville

00:32Skyline. You know, it was the country Dylan, both from the country music side and from the fact he'd

00:39come from the Woodstock country. He wasn't happy, I don't think, with the performance after the

00:47event. And it was a mixed performance. He had been in Britain for three years and it was like

00:56the second coming of Dylan. This had been so eagerly awaited and indeed, you know, it was so

01:02disappointing. He played for a little over an hour, seemed kind of detached and somewhat indifferent

01:09to the crowd. There was a sound problem before he went on and unfortunately, as it was his first,

01:21besides the Woody Guthrie event, as it was his first proper concert back, I think he was very

01:27disappointed with the end results. Following the Isle of White performance, any residual perception

01:36that the band were principally Dylan's backing group was about to change forever. In the months

01:41preceding the festival, the band had been recording their eponymous second album and with Robertson

01:46stepping forward as chief songwriter, they had abandoned the Dylan covers and basement material

01:51of Big Pink in the search for a coherent identity of their own. Well, the difference between the

01:57Big Pink album and the band's second album was that in the second album there was a sort of a

02:01concept having to do with the Civil War and the working man and this kind of thing. The first

02:09album was just a collection of songs, that's all it was. After all, they had a few Dylan songs and

02:15they were pulling very much on their old influences. Though those old influences were in play in the

02:22second album, Dylan songs were not there. It had to be much more of a band alone album, so you can

02:30say that. Even in the graphics in the back of the album it says, well you're there when the band

02:36starts playing, you know that quote from that old Dixieland song. So there was a real sense of it

02:45being them. And the album was called The Band, you know, it was not called music from Big Pink. This

02:50is it, this is who we are. You know, Robbie has stepped forward by now certainly and taken the

02:56mantle, taken the reins as the leader, the most together member of the band and the guy who who

03:04really does bother to get up in the morning and do some work and write some songs and put these

03:09songs together, write lyrics. We rented a house, so it was very much like the Big Pink experience. We

03:16were all in a house together that had a recording studio in it. Robbie was writing the songs as we

03:23went. And as he would write a song, he would pretty much cast it as to who would be the singer

03:29of it and then we would work on it and go and rehearse it and rehearse it for a couple days

03:33and then record it and rehearse it for a couple days and record it.

03:36It is one of the landmarks in sort of proto-Americana,

03:52is the second album. It's a kind of novel in song form. It's a scrapbook based on Robbie's

04:05infatuation with the American South as channeled through primarily Levon Helm. It's through Levon

04:16that Robbie discovers the South, you know, way before this. The first visits down to the South

04:22as one of the Hawks. Levon shows him around Arkansas. So Robbie really gets his face up

04:31close to the window of what it must be like to be a Southerner.

04:46The second album is Robbie's fantasy. It's a Yankees, a Canadian's fantasy of what the South,

05:01the deep South really means. The history, the romanticism of life during, since the Civil War.

05:10And he's kind of using Levon's voice in particular as the manifestation of that Southern flavour,

05:20that Southern character. It also introduced tensions into a group that had existed for

05:25years in Easy Fraternity. Given the album's themes in context of Levon Helm's personal

05:31experience, Robertson's monopoly of the songwriting credits did permanent damage

05:35to relationships within the band. You see, writing the song is just part of it. And this

05:42speaks to the big dispute between Robbie and Levon. The old school in songwriting is that

05:50the composer and the lyricist share the credit for the song, end of story. The new model that

06:02happened in a lot of rock and roll bands was that one of the members of the band shows up

06:10with a germ of an idea, kicks it around. Somebody else says, oh, I got a guitar part for it. I have

06:14a drum part for it. I have a bass part for it. I have a keyboard part for it. They change it around.

06:19I want to change the melody this way because it fits my voice better. And in the end,

06:22they've got a more collaborative piece. And so they all slap their names on the song.

06:26Robbie was adhering to the old model. Levon wanted to adhere to the new model. Levon felt

06:34that a lot of the inspiration for these songs, particularly the ones that had to do with the

06:37South, came from his personal experience and things that he'd shared with Robbie. And that

06:46a lot of what made the song come to life were contributions of his as well as contributions

06:55from the other guys in the band. Band member differences notwithstanding, the album was an

07:01enormous success. Released on the 22nd of September 1969, it quickly broke the Billboard

07:07chart top 10 and proved hugely influential in rehabilitating the sound of the rural South

07:12into contemporary American music. The band's second album is a peak for anybody. When you

07:20talk about Pet Sounds and Sergeant Pepper and whatever you want to talk about, you've got to

07:24throw in the band's second album. There's hardly a naff note on it. I feel there's still the

07:35Retro Rockets firing from their close association with Bob Dylan. It is a key inspiration and link

07:42for the alt country and Americana scenes today. You cannot scratch a Jayhawks or a Wilco or a

07:52Lucinda Williams or a Fleet Foxes and not find somebody that's heard the band's second album

07:59over and over and over again. It changed the way that long-haired people looked at the South. That

08:08a band who'd played behind Dylan, who'd been at the sort of forefront of the civil rights,

08:17music, this group could write a song and release a song called The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down,

08:24an elegy, a lament for the South as it goes down in the Civil War. This was profoundly radical

08:36or sort of in a kind of inverted way. I think it changed the way a lot of people thought about the

08:44South. Suddenly the South started to become kind of hip again. The band's early success and creative

08:53energy proved ultimately to be unsustainable and over the course of the early 70s their star began

08:59to wane. By 1973 the group were in bad shape. In a move that suggested some nostalgia for their

09:06Hawks days, they released an album of classic R&B covers entitled Moondog Matinee. Reviews were

09:12tepid. You can see to a certain extent while there's wonderful songs on every record the band

09:18ever did, you can see and hear that the air's seeping out of their particular balloon a little

09:24bit. They partied too hard, they didn't work hard enough. By the time Dylan asked them to, you know,

09:35saddle up and go on the road with him again, and he did record an album with him again, I think it

09:41probably came as something of a lifesaver. And the reunion came at a time when Dylan's own

09:49career was threatening to drift. Recent LPs had met with mixed reviews, none of which were overly

09:55enthusiastic, and the lack of touring had toned down his profile. Having left Columbia and signed

10:01for David Geffen's Asylum Records, Dylan elected to preface his return to touring with a new album

10:06and asked the band to join him in the studio to record Planet Waves. You know, he'd been low-key

10:13for two or three years, and I mean, you know, a huge amount going on. He put out baffling records

10:19and some pretty poor records that just had everybody scratching their heads. Lots of sort

10:29of, you know, cover songs that no one would have imagined him doing on things like Soft Portrait

10:36and the Dylan album and, you know, odd good things scattered amongst all of this. But, you know, what

10:43on earth was Dylan doing? You know, where is he going? You know, are we ever going to hear

10:51important, meaningful music from this guy again? He would stagnate if he stood still, but I think

10:57his problem was that he didn't know where to go at that time. I think there was still even people

11:03looking at what had happened in the basement tapes. There was still a whole mystery behind

11:09that missing period. And, of course, from 1969 onwards, there'd been a flood of Dylan bootlegs.

11:18I mean, obviously, The Great White Wonder, which in part used demos from the Big Pink

11:24basement sessions, was, of course, the first ever rock bootleg. People still wanted to know who Bob

11:29Dylan was and what his next move was going to be. He was still very high profile.

Bob Dylan And The Band: Down In The Flood (2012) - Trailer (Documentary, Music)

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