11. The BandThe Band (The Brown Album)

I saw The Band live too, when they played with Dylan. I could have put a Dylan album on here as well. I would have probably put his Greatest Hits album, because that’s what I got when I was a kid.
If you go back and listen to The Band’s records, their drummer Levon Helm is so funky. There is a hip hop song that sampled one of his beats, and it might have been from ‘Rag Mama Rag’, but I wonder why I didn’t sample that beat or ‘Up On Cripple Creek’ or ‘The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down’. Their first album was great too obviously – Music From Big Pink, but for some reason I just looked at these songs, and I remember listening. The Band and Neil Young are together in my mind, and then The Allman Brothers, because they had a bit of that thing too.
The Band was so influential on other musicians like Eric Clapton, who always said after hearing them he made Americana records. And it’s funny because they were mainly Canadian. I could have also put Creedence Clearwater Revival on the list – another group that never really got any love in Europe, but they had number one records! It’s funny, thinking about The Band and Neil Young and their influence on people like Clapton who then got involved with Delaney & Bonnie, then Derek And The Dominos, with Duane Allman on guitar, there are so many connections.