Richard Manuel’s Tears and Tragedy

Besides being blessed with a cumulatively insane level of skills on a variety of musical instruments, The Band were blessed to have three lead singers for every type of tune.

Want a sound that’s backwoodsy Southern with some soulful grit and the ghosts of the Lost Cause? There’s Levon Helm (“The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down,” “Ophelia,” “The Weight”). Need a plaintive, high-lonesome moan of romantic injustice? Let me introduce you to Rick Danko (“It Makes No Difference,” “Long Black Veil,” “Unfaithful Servant”).

But if you wanted some real depth, from the growly, gutbucket Ray Charles sandpaper sound to shredding, jagging, howling pain (sometimes in falsetto), your man on the mike and also the piano for the group was Richard Manuel (“Tears of Rage,” “I Shall Be Released,” “King Harvest [Has Surely Come]).”

Now comes the first solo biography of the tortured, inspiring, and complicated Canadian ivory tinkler in Richard Manuel: His Life and Music, from the Hawks and Bob Dylan to The Band by Stephen T. Lewis (400 pp., $35, Schiffer Publishing).

Lewis—who had both the blessing and participation of Manuel’s family and friends—produces a lavish, beautiful work chock filled with text and rare photos and memorabilia. And it illuminates the life and work of the musicians who self-deprecating nickname among friends and bandmates was “Beak”—a nod to his prominent proboscis.

As a teen, Manuel was obsessed with the blues as he honed his craft through endless one nighters with schoolmates in the Revols, before joining American rockabilly singer Ronnie Hawkins backup band, the Hawks.

Manuel and his bandmates, Robbie Robertson (guitar), Levon Helm (vocals/drums), Rick Danko (vocals/bass), and Garth Hudson (organ/saxophone) would eventually depart the nest to go on their own, before coming to the attention of one Bob Dylan. The Bard of Hibbing would be fronting the group during his crucial 1965/66 “gone electric” tour, facing audiences of various levels of appreciativeness and hostility.

Helm—the lone American—would even leave the tour because he couldn’t take the booing, replaced by Houstonian Mickey Jones before eventually rejoining the group. Cooling their heels (and on retainer) while Dylan recovered from a motorcycle accident, the band shifted headquarters to a rambling house in West Saugerties, New York.

Nicknamed “Big Pink” for its exterior color, the group began running through jam sessions on new and ancient tunes in the house’s basement. Dylan eventually joined them while Hudson kept tape rolling. The sessions became the legendary “Basement Tapes” and led to the group’s own debut record.

But what to call the group, whose sound on covers and a burgeoning pot of originals blended rootsy country, early rock, gospel, blues, and even a tinge of jazz, making them to some the forefathers of what we now call Americana? Well, Dylan tended to refer to them as “the band.” So, they became simply…the Band.

Music from Big Pink appeared in 1968, with a painting by Dylan himself gracing the cover. Next year, The Band cemented the reputation and archaic image of these five men who look like they could have stepped out from a documentary on the Civil War or Old West. And the sound enthralled fellow artists like George Harrison, Eric Clapton, Van Morrison, and Roger Waters.

But in a band with three party boys (Manuel, Danko, Helm) and two sober sisters (Roberston, Hudson), Manuel was perhaps the most out of control, and the heaviest drinker. He racked up car wrecks and near-death road experiences zipping around Woodstock by the dozens. Not surprisingly, he songwriting contributions and attention began to wane just as the Band was hitting its peak, as each album got a little less traction.

By 1976, Robertson was the only one willing to steer the ship, and it wasn’t going to crash under his command. But whether that Thanksgiving’s star-studded “The Last Waltz” show was meant to be an ending or a breather for the group, it was clear the addled Manuel could not continue to tour. Hell, he could barely function, as the resulting documentary’s interview footage clearly showed. But wow, what a farewell that show was.

Adrift and with no job, Manuel sank even impossibly further into booze, drugs, and women, his marriage and relationship to his two small children already wrecked. Lewis is unsparing and unromantic detailing the downfall, and people who were there add painful commentary.

Bottoming out, he actually managed to stay mostly sober in the early ‘80s, leading to the inevitable: a Band reunion for tour and records. Though without leader Robertson—who had established a career as both a solo artist and in film acting and scoring—it wasn’t the same.

Manuel fell off the wagon, got back on, and fell off again. He wrote new music, then he stopped. He had great nights onstage, and horrendous ones. And after one particularly dismal Band show at a dinky Florida club, Richard Manuel went back to his hotel room, at some point entered his bathroom, wrapped a belt around his neck, and hung himself from the shower rod. He was 42 years old.

With Richard Manuel, Stephen T. Lewis has done a great service to admirers of the Band. But more importantly truly fleshed out the life—in all its highs and lows—to the piano man with the rip in his voice and a hole in his heard that no amount of his trusty Grand Marnier could fill.

The post Richard Manuel’s Tears and Tragedy appeared first on Houston Press.