I may be one of the few guys around this site who bought the Band's Big Pink the day it came out. I brought it over to a girl's house, and made her listen to it twice on her dad's record player, and then we had tea. I still have the vinyl.
Re Big Pink, said Robbie Robertson: "This is emotional and this is story telling. You can see this mythology. This is the record that I wanted to make."
I didn't think of "The Weight" as being the centerpiece of the record; I thought the record was all of a piece.
Anyway songs and poems are not puzzles. They just are what they are. Still, it's diverting if pointless to look at their references. Vanderleun tracked down a piece on The Weight. The piece seems foolish at some points but interesting at others.
I liked this Robertson quote in the piece:
If I read the lyrics to some of my favourite songs, they don’t mean shit to me. But if I hear ‘When A Man Loves A Woman’, it is so powerful and emotional. All I want out of any of these songs is the right emotion. I don’t give a shit what the lyrics are. Dylan rambled on way too much for my liking. I remember years ago saying to him: ‘listen to ‘When A Man Loves A Woman’; I like this more than any of the songs we’re playing. This is emotional to me; our songs are clever. I don’t care for clever. Let’s try and get somewhere that has an emotional thing.
Also got a kick out of this Rick Danko quote:
So Levon spoke to this chick he was dating. Her name was Kathy and she was the most beautiful girl in Toronto… 16 years old when he met her, and she was a gorgeous, gorgeous lady. She looked beautiful and no one could resist her. Anyway, Levon explained the situation to her, and she kindly gave this cop who was trying to crucify us a blow job. Then she told him she was 14 years old. He was the chief witness against us, but this was some weird shit for him, and he disappeared, we never saw him again. In the end everyone else got off, and I received a year’s suspended sentence on probation.
Tracked: May 29, 13:24