Stage Fright (1970)

As an oldest brother myself, I might have missed out on more of the older-brother influence in music than many, though I did have friends with older brothers who made their impacts (as I doubtless made my own ... certainly I tried!). Stage Fright, the Band's third album and widely considered a drop-off from the first two, is one example. The Band has to stand as classic older-brother music. The critics in Rolling Stone went apeshit for them, which sounded to me, after I heard them, like merely falling for the pretensions of a rock band that called itself "the Band" or, more likely, falling for the broader legend of Bob Dylan even after 1966. As it happens, I seem to be mostly immune to the collaboration—I certainly don't consider the 1974 double-live Before the Flood even that good, for example, let alone one of the greatest live albums ever made, and Greil Marcus's chapter about them in Mystery Train seems more embarrassingly insistent to me now than insightful. Dare I say, re: the Band, OK boomer? No, I better not. I'm aware Stage Fright is the wrong Band album to like best, but it's the one I heard the most at the time, with my friend's older brother often blasting the second side from behind his closed door (alternating with either side or all of Bridge Over Troubled Water). It probably makes more sense when you count in that I don't really like the Band that much. Stage Fright came out just before I started 10th grade and high school and I had a kind of gut response to the title song, buried toward the back of side 2 but played on hippie radio, as it spoke to my feelings in that moment about what lay ahead. See the man, gathering up all his might. First verse: "Deep in the heart of a suffering kid / Who suffered so much for what he did / They gave this plowboy his fortune and fame / Since that day he ain't been the same." Those first two lines speak directly to my life experience and the next two directly to my problem with the Band. Like, plowboy? Who's a plowboy? It's possible Robbie Robertson, who wrote the song, may have met plowboys but I don't think he ever was one. It reads to me as more of the Band's bent toward co-opting older American country and folk music, admittedly often in surprisingly resonant ways. Neil Young, another Canadian (four of the five members of the Band are Canadian), can also be really good at it. On songs like "Stage Fright" or "Katie's Been Gone" on The Basement Tapes the Band are capable of big warm emotional moments. I understand their first two albums are better as American folk music in many ways, and I've come to appreciate them in moderation. But Stage Fright is what I like to play—with highlights beyond the title song that include "The Shape I'm In," "Time to Kill," and that lovely organ bit on "All La Glory"—for those unusual occasions when I'm in the mood for the Band. Oh hell, these days I can just put together a playlist. D'oh!