Garth Hudson (1937 - 2025)

With Garth Hudson, who died on 21 January the last living member of The Band left this world. Last year Robbie Robertson died and I had not written on it, so let's make amends today.

Hudson always came across as a bit of an oddity to me. He played in a famous band and was a unique part of The Band's sound but also how he looked: totally out of place. With his long beard and presence of an older man, he did not belong it seemed to me. He played everything that needed to be played, whatever the rest wasn't playing. No singing, as the only member of The Band.

He was born in Canada, like all the others bar Levon Helm. In 1937. That made Hudson years older than all the others. Reading his obituary, he already had a musical career of sorts in classical and jazz music before the others came on to the scene. His famous anecdote was that when joining Ronny Hawkins and the Hawks, see 'Who Do You Love', the start of 'The Last Waltz' Hudson was paid $10 a week extra as he could pretend to be the musical teacher of the other band members. To convince his parents he was in a paid position! It's more that I think how young the others were when they started as a Hawk.

The breakthrough came when Bob Dylan called on The Hawks to play as his backing band when he went electric. So they just called themselves The Band when they started recording in Woodstock when Bob Dylan had disappeared (there) after his motorcycle accident in 1966. That became 'The Basement Tapes' and 'Music From The Big Pink' and the rest is history. The former first led to a) a string of hit singles for other artists, like Manfred Mann, Julie Driscoll and The Band itself. b) a bootleg album and c) in 1975 to the famous double album. In 1968 the band's own career started with hit single 'The Weight' and the mentioned album.

Dylan and The Band recorded 'Planet Waves' together and went on a tour together. The double live album 'Before The Flood' has been expanded recently as a multi cd box containing all the shows they played together.

Garth Hudson always remained the man in the background, playing what needed to be played. Robbie Robertson became the songwriting genius but also the lesser band member, as it were the other three, Levon Helm, Rick Danko and Richard Manuel who had the better or more distinctive voices, like Manuel and Helm. Hudson hovered in the background on a keyboard, saxophone or whatever. Never in the limelight, always serving. I never read 'Across The Great Divide' the The Band biography. Somehow I can't imagine any debauchery on the side of Garth Hudson with his weird professor like image. That was the amazing part of the book, I read in a review: this band of serious musicians turned out to be total dopeheads. Danko died of it even. But Garth Hudson?

Garth Hudson turned into the archiver of the band. It was thanks to his collection of tapes that Bob Dylan was able to release the complete 'Basement Tapes Bootleg Series box set years ago. 10 or 11 cds filled with recordings from that basement and other locations around Woodstock, N.Y. where they recorded. He died in a nursing home there at the age of 87.

What remains of The Band is the music. No, I've never been a great fan of The Band. Somehow it's just not my music, exceptions permitted. 'The Last Waltz' remains a brilliant show though. The dvd comes out regularly.

Wout de Natris - van der Borght