When The Call‘s main songwriter/singer Michael Been passed away recently , a quote was attributed to him in his obituary where he claimed to have seen The Band in concert at age 18 , which set Been on a life’s course of music literally until the day that he died . Watching Martin Scorsese’s The Last Waltz , The Band’s Thanksgiving 1976 swan song , shows how that kind of epiphany could happen . But the earliest work of this quintet with the generic name is no less impressive : when Rolling Stone magazine writers compiled their Top 500 Albums of All Time , The Band’s 1968 debut Music from Big Pink ranked at #34 . That’s almost twenty places higher than The Beatles’ debut ! Additionally , TheBand‘ s second album that year landed at #45 on the same list , while the sublime Stage Fright 40 years ago went Top 5 and sold over a million copies . Widely viewed as the fathers of the Americana musical movement , The Band may have also been one of rock’s first alternative groups . In my classic rock interview,main songwriter Robbie Robertson helps me make that case for this band , members of the Rock’n'Roll Hall of Fame .
-Redbeard