I love “The Band”.

I’m reading Robbie Robertson’s autobiography and then I get to this part about their first tour:

“We were asked to play the Mississippi Riverboat Festival, and the name sounded so cool I asked Bob (Dylan) if he wanted to come and sing a couple of tunes with us. He said “sure, what would you want to do?”

“Whatever you feel like singing. You want to do something from your last record, the basement, one of the older tunes? You name it and we’ll play it.

Dylan nodded. “Okay, we’ll figure it out on the way there.” Robertson writes “He knows

by now we could tackle any of these tunes on a moment’s notice. It felt so natural playing with Bob again, and together we gave that crowd an unexpected finale that included Woody Guthrie’s “I Ain’t Got No Home”, Little Richards “Slippin and Slidin”, and an old mountain song “In the Pines.”

Fascinating.

I was there. It was the Mississippi River Festival (I never heard Riverboat”), in

Edwardsville Illinois across the river from St. Louis.

The Band had finished their set (all business, no chat, great), when

Dylan walks out.

What Robbie doesn’t say is that Dylan had never appeared publicly after his motorcycle

accident and their were rumors he was unable to walk, hurt badly, maybe never going to play again.

When he walked out we all started jumping up and down screaming, sort of like

Gene Wilder in Young Frankenstein “He’s Alive!”, or in this case “God Lives!”

I have to admit, I had no clue what the songs were until I read Robby’s list.

We were just glad Dylan was alive and well and everybody went nuts for all three songs.

Interesting to read an account from stage of what you saw from the seats.