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| A Band Once The Band |
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| Richard Manuel a suicide |
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This is Dark Cloud on Wednesday, March 05, 1986. This has been on eerie day. Last night, Kgnu was at Channel 12 for their pledge drive, and we watched The Last Waltz, the movie about The Band, my favorite group during my college days. While we were watching, Richard Manuel, one of The Band's members, was committing suicide by hanging after playing a bar in my college's town. I don't like to hypothesize particularly, but those of us who have played the road for years in bars know something about depression. And like Robbie Robertson said in the Last Waltz: “We’ve been playing on the road for 16 years. I can't even conceive of being on the road for 20 years. I can't even discuss it." The Last Waltz was shot ten years ago, which meant that The Band, less Robertson, had been on and off the road for 26 years. There is a romance of the road utterly undeserved. It has its moments for the very young; as everything does but boredom, and there’s plenty of that. And now, the travels of a band do not even have the benefit of regional distinctions. America has become so homogenized our accents are disappearing, New Orleans looks little different from Des Moines; all interstate and Holiday Inns and the same restaurants. It is all a bland landscape from the inside of planes and hotel rooms. All of that can be suffered if there is a future that holds promise, but the Band had only a past. Living that life only for a living wage doesn't make it. Starting in the '60s, everyone for a time has complained about the number of drug dependent and alcohol led performers in both rock and country. For those who have never led that life, as I did as an untalented hack, what is amazing is that most regular inhabitants of the road can last without drugs or booze, because romance aside, aging dreams cannot substitute forever. In some cases, it cannot substitute at all. Whatever, it may be revealed there were other reasons for the demise of Richard Manuel. I only know that the days of the rock tours are over, that it will never be the same in the age of MTV. To sell records, one does not have to labor long on the road; one can do it through a video tape. To be on the road now, playing bars without a record contract or hope for one must be a horrid burden for bands and something of an embarrassment if you were once The Band. |
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