I met Levon once, around 2002 or so, at the groundbreaking for Bethel Woods, the outdoor concert venue that sits next to the original 1969 Woodstock site. I’ve gone to some shows at his Barn between Woodstock and Saugerties, not far from Big Pink, that his wife runs.
While I have their early LPs in my collection, I must confess that I don’t play them very often. In hindsight, it may be because I may be one of the few who was put off from the beginning by The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down. Odly, I actually liked the melody of the song quite a bit, but the lyrics … well, best that can be said is that you can take them in a couple of ways. I know that it was written during the height of the Vietnam War protests, and the song has more in common with Creedence Clearwater’s Fortunate Son than it does with Gone With the Wind, and that was possibly its intent, but in retrospect it turns out that I was right, good old boys from the south have treated it as a sort of anthem, Joan Baez stopped performing it even though it was her biggest hit, and Robbie’s halfhearted attempt at explaining the issues away never satisfied me.
To the extent that I still listen to them, it’s more out of nostalgia due to heavy exposure during my youth.
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