Legacy & Influence / Artists They Influenced

Artists They Influenced

Eric Clapton has said plainly that Music from Big Pink is part of why he left Cream, chasing the same loose, communal feeling with Delaney and Bonnie and eventually Derek and the Dominos. George Harrison called the group the best band in the history of the universe and said he was picturing Levon Helm's voice specifically while writing "All Things Must Pass." Both men were at the height of their own fame when they said it, which makes the admission land harder: two of the most famous musicians alive were listening to a group that had never had a real hit single and taking notes.

The list of artists who've named the group as a direct influence runs long and genre-crossing: Elton John, the Grateful Dead, Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, Led Zeppelin, Elvis Costello, Phish, and Pink Floyd all appear on AllMusic's own list of acts shaped by the group's sound. Wilco, formed out of the wreckage of the alt-country band Uncle Tupelo, built an entire career on ground the Band had broken decades earlier. My Morning Jacket's Jim James has cited the group directly as one of his band's clearest reference points, alongside Neil Young and the psychedelic end of the 1960s folk scene.

The tributes got literal, too. Endless Highway: The Music of the Band, released in 2007, gathered My Morning Jacket, Death Cab for Cutie, the Allman Brothers Band, Jakob Dylan, and Rosanne Cash, among others, to cover the catalog track by track. In 2012 and 2013, members of Wilco, Dr. Dog, Ween, and several other bands staged something called The Complete Last Waltz, performing all forty-one songs from the original 1976 concert in order, including several that never made the final film. And in Levon Helm's own barn in Woodstock, former bandmates Jim Weider and Randy Ciarlante formed the Weight Band in 2012 with Garth Hudson, keeping the catalog alive in live performance well past the point where any of the original five were still touring it themselves.