The conventional wisdom is right: Pound for pound, "Big Pink" and "The Band" are more complete successes for this group, and I love them both. But I love "Stage Fright" more. It is the album where this group drops its masks and speaks directly to the audience about themselves and each other.

The Band is really two duos: Helm and Danko, who are usually paired as singers on some of the group's best-loved material, and Robertson and Manuel, who are engaged in a sort of musical and spiritual dialogue that often forms much of the depth, richness and mystery of this group. That dialogue is the dominant theme of "Stage Fright" in its many evocations of the theme of self-destructiveness, especially the self-destructiveness of a great artist.

My theory is, Richard Manuel was the artistic soul of the The Band. He was their best singer, by far. His "feel" approach to playing the many instruments he played, especially piano, gave the Band a funky, soulful "bottom" that contrasted with the highly intellectual approaches of both Robertson and Hudson. Manuel was responsible, on their first three albums, for some of their very best songs as writer or co-writer: "Tears of Rage," "In A Station," "Lonesome Suzie," "Whispering Pines," "Across the Great Divide," and, on this album, "Sleeping" and "The Shape I'm In" were at least partly his. But...Richard Manuel was not a particularly responsible person. He was, in fact a drunk, and an unmotivated writer. He was a sadly vulnerable man, for whom, as Robertson writes in "Sleeping," "the world was too sore to live in." In some ways, being in the Band destroyed him. At the same time, it created a place for him to hide.

Robertson, ever the brilliant control freak, clearly admired and loved Richard Manuel, and was also exasperated with him. Robertson was basically in charge of the business of The Band, and also the artistic direction of The Band as its most prolific songwriter. He wanted Manuel to play a bigger role, but eventually saw that he couldn't, or wouldn't. And so, according to my theory, he wrote songs to reach him when nothing else would work.

It is no accident that the leadoff track is "Strawberry Wine," a fun but desperate track in which Levon Helm sings (brilliantly) the part of a drunk who wants to be left alone to "feel good all the time." This is followed by the album's first masterpiece, "Sleeping," which at first seems to be about life as a musician on the road, but expands into a poem about isolation and hiding. This song, one of Manuel's most treasured performances, almost seems like a dialogue between the two men, with Robertson acknowledging that perhaps life on the road, in which "to be called by noon, is to be called too soon" is part of the drill if you're performing before crowds of people "searching" for something special every night. Maybe, Robertson seems to suggest, that's why Richard is such a juicer; it's the road's fault. But then, the song seems to say, that's not why. He would be living this way on his own, even if he weren't part of The Band. Maybe the rock and roll lifestyle isn't killing him; maybe it's really keeping him alive.

I won't go through every song, but themes of drunkenness, fear, isolation, and hiding take some form in almost every remaining track. Even the two songs that have the "old-timey" historic and mythic resonances of their prior albums, "Daniel and the Sacred Harp" and "W.S. Walcott's Medicine Show" are tales full of personal symbolism. Richard Manuel plays the role of the music-mad Daniel who sells his soul to play the sacred harp, but Levon Helm sings the part of the narrator who becomes horrified at Daniel's fate: "When he looked to the ground, he noticed no shadow did he cast." Again, this is Robertson assessing the cost of the music career to himself and his bandmates, especially Manuel. "Walcott" reinterprets the rock and roll touring lifestyle as a 19th century medicine show, in which alcohol-laced snake oil and other mind altering substances are purveyed to the dazzled crowds as the keys to health--which, back in '69 is about right. Manuel just happened to be the guy who kept sampling the stock.

After this album, Manuel had many more wonderful performances ahead of him, but he wrote no more songs. From the Last Waltz and everything one can read about the Band, he appears to have not taken the bootstrap advice of the singer in "Stage Fright" who "when he gets to the end, wants to start all over again." He went on, and kept singing because that kept him afloat long enough to get the next drink. He began the long, slow retreat that to the people who knew him best and admired his talent was probably an agonizing spectacle to watch. I see "Stage Fright" as a collection of songs in which Robbie Robertson alternately rages at, laughs at, cries about, and tries to save, Richard Manuel--and in which Richard Manuel finally escapes Robertson's tender mercies. And, as great as the first two Band albums might have been, they don't have this kind of intimacy and depth. This album is hardly the coda or afterthought to a classic period--it may be its culmination.

Yeah, all of the Band's albums are dark, and some are intense to

say the least, but this record has Robbie and the other guys at

their peak. This time, though, they are playing ROCK AND ROLL!

Every track is a marvelous piece of lyricism, and the music is

equally good. "The Rumor" has to be one of the ten best songs

ever written anywhere by anybody, and The Band drive it home with

just the right amount of plot and passion. Don't pass this up,

because music like this isn't created anymore. It may not be their BEST ALBUM, but everything by the Band is brilliant and just wait until you hear the sonic clarity here. Never in my life

have I heard music that has this much atmosphere and intelligence. OH, YOU DON'T KNOW how good this record is!!!

Published reviews of this album are perplexing to me. Do people compare this album to their first two masterpieces, or are they reviewing the album by itself, comparative to everything else that came out that year? In my opinion the mixed reviews that it was gotten are due to people comparing it to their earlier work which must not be, and cannot be done. The supposed decline in quality from The Band to this is overly exaggerated. This album is still better than almost anything else recorded at the time and is simply a joy to listen to. That being said it is a much more straightforward and less complex album than its predecessors yet this does not make it any less enjoyable to listen to. For the most part the songs are all sung with one lead vocal, with little harmony in the mix. The album kicks off with Strawberry Wine a very up tempo rocker cowritten and sung by Helm. This moves into Sleeping, an absolutely beautiful Richard Manuel song that almost makes me cry listening to it. Another beautiful song on the album is All La Glory a childish lullaby type song sung by Helm that is one of my favorites. There are many more "rock" songs on this album than on any other Band album in my opinion. Time to Kill, Just Another Whistle Stop and The Shape I'm In are all heavier than most of their songs and the closest the Band got to sounding like anyone else. Stage Fright, in my opinion the best song on the album, will always be one of my favorites. The Rumor is actually the only song on this album that I don't consider to be great. The playing on this album is still impeccable even if the arrangements aren't as complex. Both Hudson's organ and Robertson's guitar are much more prominent. There are more guitar solos on this album then on their first two albums combined and Hudson's organ also becomes the lead instrument more often, notably on The Shape I'm In. Danko uses a fretless bass on the whole album which is quite interesting. The horn arrangement on W.S Walcott Medicine Show is a real treat as well. Overall I think the down home country feeling is still there although the songs have become more on their own than put together. which is by no means a bad thing. The wide range of instruments remains, and Robertson's songwriting is still effective. This remastered version contains far less than the rest of the albums but this is no reason to not go right out and pick this up. Stage Fright is a true masterpiece, an album that deserves to be listened to and valued based on the music that it contains, not on what came before it.

I've always thought the biggest problem for The Band was that their first two albums were almost too good. Because they were among the best ever released, everything after them was downgraded. Cahoots isn't as bad as a lot of people seem to think and Northern Lights is actually a very good album.

But back to Stage Fright. It isn't as original or groundbreaking as the first two. But compared to almost everything released by anyone in the 35 years since this was issued, it's still an A-plus.

Maybe it is, as one reviewer suggests, symbolic of Robertson's frustration with Manuel's (and Danko's) substance abuse problems. That makes it more personal and less roots-based than the first two, one reason it's been downgraded. Big Pink and The Band were groundbreaking albums. Stage Fright was similar (although much better) to a lot of albums in the early '70s.

In any case, I'm happy that The Band seems to be getting the respect in the 21st century that it got only sporadically during its peak years (68-72). Even though the music world ranked them with the Beatles (see Clapton's comments) I don't think any album sold more than 800,000 copies, a piddling number today. I suspect the reissues might have done close to that and I love the fact that people who weren't born during their heyday now love them.

One aside about this album: the title song isn't a reference to Richard or Rick. It was Robbie's problem: literally the stage fright he experienced just before The Band's debut (as The Band, not The Hawks) in San Francisco.

As it has been documented The Band began their downward spiral on this album. Compared to the first two landmark recordings, this does pale in comparison. This is also where Robbie Robertson's writing muse began to desert him. Most of the idiosyncratic chord changes and progressions are gone. I don't know if Rick Danko could ever give a poor vocal performance, so I'm a little biased.The title track is one of my all time favorites. I agree wholeheartedly with a previous reviewer, Richard Manuel was the heart and soul musically and spiritualy of this group, as his vocals on 'The Shape I'm In' give testament to. The rest is not groundbreaking material, but damn good nontheless. Obviously the casual fan doesn't start here, but get here at some point.