Hippies vs. Punks: The Last Waltz, Pt. 2, Rick Danko 1977

There are two great tracks -- The Last Waltz-level great -- on Rick Danko (1977), "New Mexicoe" (a live version of which appears above) and "Sip the Wine" (below):

Almost all the songs on the 10-song debut solo album by the bass player and vocalist for The Band are good if not excellent. Four of the tracks Danko co-writes with Hippie founding father Emmett Grogan ("Brainwash" is particularly good). Every day last week at work I listened to the album on YouTube. I never tired of it (which is more than I can say for my Oi! immersion of Cock Sparrer and Sham 69's Tell Us the Truth, both from 1978). And that's what makes the poor sales of Rick Danko, followed by his label (Arista) promptly dropping him, so hard to explain. I've come to the conclusion that the album, like Levon Helm's first post-Last Waltz album, Levon Helm and RCO All-Stars (1977), was ahead of its time.

To give Robbie Robertson some credit, as the guy responsible for the break up of The Band and making of The Last Waltz, he saw the end of the Hippies coming, and he got out on his own terms. This is from Robbie Robertson's introduction to the 2002 re-mixed re-released The Last Waltz concert album.

Many of the artists who performed in The Last Waltz have gone on to make great music through the years, and some are still doing brilliant work today, but the spirit of those times turned a corner and never came back. It's been said that the inspiration of those times came out of the war in Vietnam and the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert F. Kennedy. It was, for sure, a powerful time. There was so much creative electricity, and everybody kept raising the bar higher. Nobody knew it then, but it would be a long time before we'd see that kind of passion in music, movies, and the arts again. 

If the '50s were about rebels without a cause, then the '60s and the '70s were about rebels with a cause. But by the time The Last Waltz came out [the spring of 1978], that revolution was over. It had served its purpose, and everybody was moving on.

This is the fundamental Hippie mistake. It's the belief -- to crib part of the title of a Jimmy Breslin book about the Congressional effort to impeach Nixon -- that the "Good Guys Finally Won." This is slothful thinking. Nothing of the sort happened. Nixon skirted justice. Yes, he resigned in infamy to avoid impeachment, but his handpicked successor pardoned him the next month.

But by Thanksgiving 1976 it's water under the bridge. The peanut farmer who campaigned as a purifier, a national redeemer, is headed to the White House. The Hippies, as drug-addled as ever, are licking their chops in anticipation of continued commercial success and some guilt-free corporate cock sucking. You can see this in The Last Waltz when Scorsese interviews Danko at The Band's Shangri-La Studios in Malibu. Danko plays Scorsese a sample of "Sip the Wine," and you can tell he's ready for solo stardom:

At least this is what I thought when I was enamored with the film back in the early '90s. Now it's not so clear to me. But back then, from the summer 1990 to the end of 1992, I was suffering too much from being dumped by my wife -- my sweetheart, my missing half -- to be curious about tracking down the solo work Danko did after The Last Waltz. I had everything I needed in a song that The Band performs, with Danko on lead vocals, early on in the documentary:

"It Makes No Difference," written by Robbie Robertson, was my separation anthem; I drank and brawled and typed my way clear of my wife while listening to it. I owe a lot to that song. Its great sadness was my life at the time. It helped get me through, which is what art is supposed to do.

And I realize now that The Last Waltz documents a time which corresponds to the collapse of my parents' marriage and the dissolution of our nuclear family. Between the autumn of 1976 (when The Last Waltz is performed) and the spring of 1978 (when The Last Waltz is released) my parents went through a nasty divorce.

My father, who is the coach in the team photo above, showed up drunk to the soccer game at which this picture was taken. He reeked of alcohol. He had been fighting with my mother. Their days as a couple were finished, and he was rebelling against the knowledge. When he got to the field he put everyone in different positions. I was the star, a midfielder, and he stuck me back on defense. -- I'm the kid, middle row, far right, sporting the longest hair, a Prince Valiant cut not unlike Rick Danko's. Everyone on the team was pissed, which you can tell by the large number of frowns. I can't remember if we won or lost. I think we must have lost. One thing about the game I do remember is dribbling the ball from in front of our own goal up to midfield where, to spite my father, I launched a shot. The goalkeeper for the opposing squad misjudged the ball's flight, ran out too late to catch it; and instead, it bounced over his head and into the net for a score. A couple months later and an hour north up Highway 101 The Last Waltz takes place.

By immersing myself in the film and soundtrack during my own divorce it's clear to me that I was unconsciously tapping into the heart of darkness, looking for a cure in the poison. And that cure for me was Rick Danko.

Imagine my shock, my horror, when, in 1991, at the end of my period of marriage mourning, I took my new girlfriend, a woman with whom I would spend the next decade, to see The Band at the Lonestar Roadhouse in Midtown Manhattan and it turns out Rick Danko is an obese grinning buffoon plucking clownish riffs on his bass as Yuppies, hopping up on tables, wriggle ass and cheer him on. I don't know what was more shocking, the sight of Danko or Helm. Danko could have been an impostor. He looked nothing like his younger slender self. His face appeared completely different, and his bloated trunk bore no resemblance to the lithe herky-jerky roots rocker memorialized in the Scorsese picture. Helms looked like a mummified version of The Last Waltz Levon. A wizened gnomish frail old man with raisins for eyes, I saw him exiting a tour bus that was parked in front of the bar on West 52nd St. He was being led by a young woman who I assumed was his daughter.

Before the second song was finished I told my girlfriend that we should go. So we walked out. My heroes had not lived up to expectations. And, like a petulant child, I was upset.

It causes me some pain to relate this. Our heroes should not be disposable. And it caused me pain these last two weeks studying Rick Danko. Not because the music is bad; no, the music is excellent. What caused me pain is that at first I dismissed it, jotting down on a legal pad "boozy, coked-out" and "Hippie TV Party." Then the sound kept getting better and stronger until I fell in love with every song. I had judged too soon, just as Arista had. The album was a legitimate path forward for the Hippies, one that was not followed; it needs to be re-issued.

Look at the Soundstage from early 1978 where Danko performs the material on his album. There's something monstrous about the shaggy full-on Prince Valiant combined with disco duds. (Hippies couldn't figure how to package themselves once they arrived in the mainstream.) Nonetheless, this is how the world looked in 1977-1978. I remember sitting in a junior high school classroom in Southern Oregon the last day of school, and what I remember -- the vibe -- is exactly what appears on this Soundstage video. Whatever it is -- whatever Zeitgeist moved on the face of deep when the Hippies started to go extinct -- it can be found here: