What sounds like a jew’s-harp on The Band’s hit single “Up on Cripple Creek” is actually keyboardist Garth Hudson playing a clavinet. And Jimi Hendrix kept a copy of Bob Dylan’s songbook in his flight bag and referred to it daily.
Not exactly earth-shattering revelations, but devotees of “The Band” and “Electric Ladyland” will be intrigued and amused by these and other insights into the creation of these “Classic Albums.” Originally broadcast on VH-1, this documentary series revisits seminal rock recordings, and is available from Rhino Home Video, self-proclaimed “keepers of the cool” and “masters of the past,” in expanded video editions.
The Band was best known as “those people who played with Bob Dylan” before emerging from his shadow with their legendary debut, “Music From Big Pink.” According to guitarist and songwriter Robbie Robertson, “The Band,” released in 1969, was conceived to “convey a sense of rural America.” It produced the group’s two biggest crossover hits, “Up on Cripple Creek” and “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down.”
“Electric Ladyland,” a double-album released in 1968, yielded Hendrix’s classic Dylan cover, “All Along the Watchtower,” and was a psychedelic, mind-bending collection of “pop-structured” rockers (“Crosstown Traffic”), signature jams (“Voodoo Chile”) and such trippy epics as “1983 . . . (A Merman I Should Turn To Be).”
What links these two albums, according to the principal creators interviewed on the separate videos, is that the Band and Hendrix were making music like no one else. Drummer Levon Helm notes that when “The Band” was recorded, “acid rock was the new trend. We steered clear of all that, and got away with it pretty much.”
Echoes the album’s co-producer, John Simon, “They took the legacy of bluegrass, roots music, rhythm and blues, Cajun and mountain music and created their own stew out of it.”
Hendrix is hailed as a peerless musician and virtuoso. Bassist Noel Redding and drummer Mitch Mitchell, who comprised the interracial Jimi Hendrix Experience, as well as studio musicians, tell stories of how Hendrix endeavored to capture on vinyl the iconoclastic sounds he heard in his head.
The live and studio performance footage on both videos is vintage (a minor quibble with the “The Band” video is it discusses three songs — “The Weight,” “I Shall Be Released” and “The Shape I’m In” — that are not on “The Band” album).
More accessible are such memorable anecdotes as how “The Band” came to be recorded in a Hollywood Hills home formerly owned by Sammy Davis, Jr.; how Robertson had to be hypnotized to ready himself for a concert, and how the Watts riots inspired Hendrix to write “House Burning Down.”
Other “Classic Albums” videos include “Fleetwood Mac: Rumours,” “The Grateful Dead: Anthem to Beauty,” “Stevie Wonder: Songs in the Key of Life” and “Paul Simon: Graceland.” Each retails for $19.95. To order direct call 800-432-0020.
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“The Band” (star) (star) 1/2
“Electric Ladyland” (star) (star) (star)
