Mr Bogus 3

The Band was a Canadian-American rock group, active from 1967 to 1976 and again from 1983 to 1999. It mainly consisted of Canadians Robbie Robertson (guitar, piano); Richard Manuel (piano, harmonica, drums, saxophone, organ); Garth Hudson (organ, piano, clavinet, accordion, synthesizer, saxophone); Rick Danko (bass guitar, violin, trombone), and an American Levon Helm (drums, mandolin, guitar, bass guitar).

The members of the Band first worked together as The Hawks, the backing band of rockabilly singer Ronnie Hawkins from 1959 until 1963; they were also known as Levon and the Hawks. (In about 1966, they released a single on Ware Records under the name the Canadian Squires). Afterwards, Bob Dylan recruited the group for his 1965-1966 world tour. They also joined him on the informal recordings that later became The Basement Tapes.

Dubbed "The Band" by their record company (a name derived from how they were referred to during their tenure with Dylan), the group left Saugerties, New York to begin recording their own material. They recorded two of the most acclaimed albums of the late 1960s; their 1968 debut Music from Big Pink (featuring the single "The Weight") and 1969's The Band. They broke up in 1976, but reformed in 1983 without founding guitarist Robbie Robertson.

Although the Band was always more popular with music journalists and fellow musicians than with the general public, they have remained an admired and influential group. They have been inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In 2004, Rolling Stone ranked them #50 on their list of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time.

Meaning of song

The lyrics tell of the last days of the American Civil War and its aftermath. Confederate soldier Virgil Caine "serves on the Danville train," the main supply line into the Confederate capital of Richmond, Virginia. General Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia is holding the line at the Siege of Petersburg. As part of the offensive campaign, Union Army General George Stoneman's forces "tore up the track again". The siege lasted from June 1864 to April 1865, when both Petersburg and Richmond fell, and Lee's troops were starving at the end ("We were hungry / Just barely alive"). Virgil relates and mourns the loss of his brother: "He was just eighteen, proud and brave / But a Yankee laid him in his grave." Virgil also tells of seeing Confederate General Robert E. Lee after the war, whose passage is called to his attention by his wife ("Virgil, quick, come see, there goes Robert E. Lee!") The General was famed for his care for his men after the war was over, but probably never visited Virgil's home state of Tennessee after the war.

Robertson claimed that he had the music to the song in his head but had no idea what it was to be about. "At some point [the concept] blurted out to me. Then I went and I did some research and I wrote the lyrics to the song." Robertson continued, "When I first went down South, I remember that a quite common expression would be, 'Well don't worry, the South's gonna rise again.' At one point when I heard it I thought it was kind of a funny statement and then I heard it another time and I was really touched by it. I thought, 'God, because I keep hearing this, there's pain here, there is a sadness here.' In Americana land, it's a kind of a beautiful sadness."

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